Bacterial Symbionts of Single Hindgut Protists from Reticulitermes falvipes

This project aimed to characterize the bacterial community associated with single isolated protist cells from the hindgut of Reticulitermes flavipes. Since these protist hosts are not yet cultivated and live in a complex environment, their symbioses with endo- and ectosymbiotic bacteria are poorly understood. Using single protist cells as template for high-throughput amplicon sequencing allowed us to investigate differences in the population structures of their bacterial symbionts within and across protist species within the same termite host.