Valerie J. McKenzie

TL;DR: A meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project is presented, creating both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth’s microbial diversity.

TL;DR: The number of parasite species found in native populations is twice that found in exotic populations, and introduced populations are less heavily parasitized than are native populations.

TL;DR: High‐throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing is used to examine the host and environmental influences on the skin microbiota of the cohabiting amphibian species Anaxyrus boreas, Pseudacris regilla, Taricha torosa and Lithobates catesbeianus from the Central Valley in California, and populations of Rana cascadae tadpoles.

TL;DR: Differences in gut bacterial beta diversity between the captive and wild state were observed for most of the taxa surveyed, except the even-toed ungulates, and beta diversity variation was also strongly influenced by host taxonomic group, diet type, and gut fermentation physiology.

TL;DR: It is suggested that future experiments focus on testing whether core bacteria on salamander skin contribute to the observed resistance to chytridiomycosis in this species even under hygenic captive conditions, and using PICRUSt, an exploratory bioinformatics tool to predict gene functions, it is found that core skin bacteria provided similar gene functions to the entire community.