information unifrac returning negative values when normalize = T

[chassenr]

Hi @ruthgrace ,

thank you for providing this extended toolbox for unifrac calculation. I went through the example scripts and noticed that unlike stated in the manuscript, the output of the information unifrac is always negative (zero for the diagonal). This behavior seems to be caused by setting normalize to TRUE. If normalize is FALSE, the information unifrac is positive.

Is it ok to just use the absolute values of the normalized information unifrac?

I also found the R package abdiv which claims to have implemented your information unifrac. However, the values obtained with their function differ from those obtained with your scripts.

Thanks!

Cheers,
Christiane