Strong relationship between EBPR metrics and P removal, but not with MMCs. MMCs clustered on substrate; synthetic wastewater MMC distinct from real wastewater. RDP assignment of PAO-based sequences aligned poorly with Accumulibacter. Negligible alignment for PAOs from a MMC performing excellent EBPR on crude glycerol. The best BLASTN match of PAO amplicons was for a synthetic wastewater-based MMC.