Diversity of Actinomycete bacteria in nests of fungus-growing ants

We used a tag-encoded 454-pyrosequencing to survey the bacterial diversity (16S) from ant workers and ant-fungal gardens. The 20-30 workers and garden material (1cm X 1cm X 1cm) were collected from one T. septentrionalis, one C. wheeleri, and two M. smithii nests. The sample from T. septentrionalis garden failed to produce sequence data. We found that all ant and garden samples had a great diversity of actinomycete species (e.g., Pseudonocardia, Amycolatopsis, Gordonia, Microlunatus, Mycobacterium, etc.).