Fig. 5: Gene-specific evolutionary metrics of three key functional microbial groups in cold seep sediments.

a Relationships between SNV density, pN/pS, and gene coverage for pmoA, mcrA, and dsrA. Each dot represents one species-level microbial population. b Frequency histogram of pN/pS for pmoA, mcrA, and dsrA. c, d Comparison of SNV density, pN/pS, and major allele frequency of dsrA and mcrA genes across different taxonomic groups of SRB and ANME, respectively. P values of differences across different taxonomic groups were calculated using Kruskal–Wallis rank-sum tests. Boxplot components: center lines, medians; box limits, 25th and 75th percentiles; whiskers, 1.5× interquartile range from the 25th and 75th percentiles; points, outliers. n values refer to the number of independent results used to derive statistics. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.