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breakaway

Species Richness Estimation and Modeling

Understanding the drivers of microbial diversity is an important frontier of microbial ecology, and investigating the diversity of samples from microbial ecosystems is a common step in any microbiome analysis. 'breakaway' is the premier package for statistical analysis of microbial diversity. 'breakaway' implements the latest and greatest estimates of species richness, described in Willis and Bunge (2015) <doi:10.1111/biom.12332>, Willis et al. (2017) <doi:10.1111/rssc.12206>, and Willis (2016) <arXiv:1604.02598>, as well as the most commonly used estimates, including the objective Bayes approach described in Barger and Bunge (2010) <doi:10.1214/10-BA527>.

README

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# breakaway <img src="docs/breakaway-logo.png" align="right" width="165px"/>

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status](https://codecov.io/gh/adw96/breakaway/branch/master/graph/badge.svg)](https://codecov.io/github/adw96/breakaway?branch=main)

Understanding the drivers of microbial diversity is an important
frontier of microbial ecology, and investigating the diversity of
samples from microbial ecosystems is a common step in any microbiome
analysis.

`breakaway` is the premier package for statistical analysis of microbial
diversity. `breakaway` implements the latest and greatest estimates of
richness, as well as the most commonly used estimates.

[`DivNet`](https://github.com/adw96/DivNet) is a package by the
`breakaway` authors for estimating Shannon diversity, and other
diversity indices. `breakaway` focuses on richness while `DivNet`
focuses on Shannon, Simpson, and other alpha diversities as well as some
beta diversity indices. Check it out!

### Citing breakaway

The `R` package `breakaway` implements a number of different richness
estimates. Please cite the following if you use them:

-   `breakaway()` and `kemp()`: Willis, A. & Bunge, J. (2015).
    Estimating diversity via frequency ratios. Biometrics.
-   `betta()`: Willis, A., Bunge, J., & Whitman, T. (2017). Improved
    detection of changes in species richness in high diversity microbial
    communities. JRSS-C.
-   `breakaway_nof1()`: Willis, A. (2016+). Species richness estimation
    with high diversity but spurious singletons. arXiv.
-   `objective_bayes_*()`: Barger, K. & Bunge, J. (2010). Objective
    Bayesian estimation for the number of species. Bayesian Analysis.

## Installation

You can install `breakaway` from github by running:

``` r
install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("adw96/breakaway")
```

`breakaway` is actively maintained and continually expanding and
developing its scope! Is there a method you would like to have
implemented in breakaway? Submit a pull request or contact the
[maintainer](http://statisticaldiversitylab.com/team/amy-willis)!

### Documentation

-   The best place to start is the
    [vignettes](https://adw96.github.io/breakaway/articles/).
-   Documentation for functions can be found
    [here](https://adw96.github.io/breakaway/reference/index.html)
-   A pdf of all documentation can be found in the
    [breakaway-manual.pdf](https://github.com/adw96/breakaway/tree/master/breakaway-manual.pdf)
-   We try to answer frequently asked questions on the
    [wiki](https://github.com/adw96/breakaway/wiki)

## Humans

Maintainer: [Amy Willis](http://statisticaldiversitylab.com)

Authors: [Amy Willis](http://statisticaldiversitylab.com), John Bunge,
[Bryan Martin](https://bryandmartin.github.io/), [Pauline
Trinh](https://twitter.com/paulinetrinh), Kathryn Barger, [David
Clausen](https://www.biostat.washington.edu/people/david-clausen) and
[Sarah Teichman](https://svteichman.github.io/).

Do you have a request for us? Let us know! We want folks to use
`breakaway` and are committed to making it as easy to use as possible.

Do you have a question? Check out the above documentation list, then
shoot us an email or open a
[Discussion](https://github.com/adw96/breakaway/discussions). We receive
a lot of emails from users, so we try to answer questions on the Wiki
rather than responding to everyone individually.

Versions across snapshots

VersionRepositoryFileSize
4.8.4 rolling linux/jammy R-4.5 breakaway_4.8.4.tar.gz 1.0 MiB
4.8.4 rolling linux/noble R-4.5 breakaway_4.8.4.tar.gz 1.0 MiB
4.8.4 rolling source/ R- breakaway_4.8.4.tar.gz 1.0 MiB
4.8.4 latest linux/jammy R-4.5 breakaway_4.8.4.tar.gz 1.0 MiB
4.8.4 latest linux/noble R-4.5 breakaway_4.8.4.tar.gz 1.0 MiB
4.8.4 latest source/ R- breakaway_4.8.4.tar.gz 1.0 MiB
4.8.4 2026-04-26 source/ R- breakaway_4.8.4.tar.gz 1.0 MiB
4.8.4 2026-04-23 source/ R- breakaway_4.8.4.tar.gz 1.0 MiB
4.8.4 2025-04-20 source/ R- breakaway_4.8.4.tar.gz 1.0 MiB

Dependencies (latest)

Imports

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