Microbial life in snake and spider venoms

Envenomation typically involves transdermal insertion of an appendage such as a tooth into prey and venom ejection through the appendage canal. Given the lack of sterility and infrequency of envenomation events in the wild, we hypothesise that the venom glands of animals such as snakes, spiders and scorpions might be niche environments for microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi acquired during envenomation. To explore this hypothesis we have generated 16S amplicon libraries from venoms and envenomation appendage swabs of various snakes, spiders and scorpions from captivity and the wild. We have also obtained two separate envenomation samples were possible, reasoning that the second might be a truer representative of the venom gland population as opposed to e.g. an oral cavity bacterial plug forming at the tip of the tooth between envenomation events. We wish to examine if the bacterial signatures detected differ between host species and sites of sampling.