Sarracenia flava and Sarracenia minor microbiome of detritus found inside the pitchers

It remains challenging to determine what features are driving the composition of native microbialcommunities due to the interconnected and overlapping habitats present in natural ecosystems.The cup-like leaf structures of Sarracenia carnivorous pitcher plants are natural, self-containedecological habitats that represent tractable models for exploring this question of microbialcommunity composition. Specifically, we were interested in determining whether two species ofSarracenia (S. minor and S. flava), sampled from the same geographic location at the sametime, select for similar or distinct microbiota. To do so, we used 16S rRNA gene communityprofiling to probe the detritus of these pitcher plants, and determined that these two Sarraceniaspecies select for distinct microbial communities. We then used PICRUSt to predict themetabolic capacities of these two enriched microbial communities, and found that the enrichedbacterial taxa also enrich for the presence of different metabolic pathways, suggesting thatthese specific communities may be providing unique functions to these two plant species. Wespeculate that Sarracenia pitcher plants may differentially enrich for different bacteria to satisfydistinct nutritional requirements. We went on to culture bacterial isolates from these samples toobtain representatives of the enriched microbial taxa as a resource for future investigations intohow these communities are establish and maintained.