Conparison of bacteria rhizosphere communities of Asiatic and American Bittersweet

Invasive bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) is an introduced liana that has invaded much of the Eastern United States and has been spreading the Midwest displacing the native American bittersweet (Celastrus scalens). The interactions of introduced plants with their soil microbial communities are viewed as an important determinant of their invasive success. But environmental differences can also contribute to differences in soil microbial communities. To start unraveling the contributions of soil environment versus plant species, rhizosphere bacterial communities of invasive and native bittersweet collected from Miller woods and West beach in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore were compared using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing.