3.2 | Raw read quality of DNA sequencing
Metabarcoding dietary analysis successfully amplified sequences of plant items from 12 Tan sheep lambs. Of the total fecal compound samples (n = 24) collected, all samples amplified the target ITS2 region. A total of 2,463,964 raw pair-end reads were obtained from the MiSeq run after demultiplexing and quality filtering. Irrelevant phyla, e.g., Ascomycota and Chlorophyta, were also generated, but our diet analysis focused only on phytogroups. Of these, 1,429,952 sequences were retained composing of 324 OTUs. Of those, 92 OTUs with a high percentage of reads (99.76%) were conserved (threshold: > 0.01% of the total). Rarefaction curves for each individual sample reached saturation in all cases (Figure 1a). The grazing and time-limited grazing samples had 68 OTUs in common (Figure 1b).