Fig. 4

Exploratory analyses performed on TARA Oceans metagenomes. a Scatter plot comparing the AGS and ACN in the matching subset of 63 TARA Oceans metagenomes representing the surface, deep chlorophyll maximum and mesopelagic water layers (SRF, DCM, and MES, respectively) in 21 sampling sites. The box plots in the lower and left-hand side panels show the distributions of the Average Genome Size (AGS) and 16S rRNA gene Average Copy Number (ACN) in the SRF, DCM, and MES water layers. For the sake of clarity, two metagenomes with relatively large AGS or ACN values were not included in the plot. These are the TARA_076_DCM_0.22–3 with an AGS = 5,036,010 bp and TARA_064_DCM_0.22–3 with an ACN = 2.4. b Scatter plots comparing the AGS with the log relative abundance of the Herbiconiux and Candidatus Pelagibacter genera (upper and lower panel, respectively) in TARA Oceans metagenomes. Herbiconiux and Candidatus Pelagibacter genera had the strongest positive and negative Pearson’s correlations with the AGS, respectively. c Scatter plot comparing the ACN with the log relative abundance of the Glaciecola genus in TARA Oceans metagenomes. This genus showed the strongest positive Pearson’s correlation with the ACN. The abundance of these genera was computed by Sunagawa et al. based on the annotation of 16S rDNA Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs). d Scatter plot comparing the AGS with the functional richness of TARA Oceans metagenomes. The functional richness was computed by Sunagawa et al. based on the abundance estimation of eggNOG orthologous groups