title: Bacterial diversity across individual lichens.
abstract: Symbioses are unique habitats for bacteria. We surveyed the spatial diversity of bacterial communities across multiple individuals of closely related lichens using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and pyrosequencing. Centers of lichens house richer, more consistent assemblages than species-poor and compositionally disparate lichen edges, suggesting that ecological succession plays a role in structuring these communities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. amushegian@gmail.com
authors.forename: Alexandra A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Mushegian
authors.forename: Celeste N
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Peterson
authors.forename: Christopher C M
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Baker
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pringle
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D018407:Bacterial Physiological Phenomena; D044822:Biodiversity; D004269:DNA, Bacterial / Q000235:genetics; D008011:Lichens / Q000382:microbiology*; D058889:Molecular Typing; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D013559:Symbiosis
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial