Interpretation of SILVA taxonomic labels

My question is how to interpret taxonomic labels, specifically the difference between suffixes _unclassified and _ge. For instance, I have these two taxa in my data, Babeliales_ge and Babeliales_unclassified, both are at the genus level.

However, I am unsure how to think about these two taxa except the highest resolution of classification is Babeliales. What differentiates taxa getting the _ge suffix vs. the _unclassified suffix? Is this a product of the database labels themselves, i.e. different researchers using different notions for unknown genus?

Hi - yeah, this is from the databases. I suspect they are the same thing. The difference is that your sequences are probably a bit different from those already present in the database.

Pat

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