title: Swab of bacterial community in leaf-shelters: 16s
design: We extracted DNA from the swabs using the DNeasy kit (Qiagen) with slight modifications to the manufactures protocol to increase DNA yield (Kueneman et al. 2014). We then PCR-amplified the V4 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene using dual-indexed 515F and 806R barcoded-primers (Kozich et al. 2013). Pooled PCR amplicons of all the samples were purified using a QlAquick Gel Extraction Kit (Qiagen) and sent for sequencing on an Illumina MiSeq sequencer at TUFTs Genomic core facility in Boston, Massachusetts, United States