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Biology

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University of New Mexico

2019

Caves

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A Comparison Of Cave Microbial Communities To Cave Roosting Bat Microbiota In El Malpais National Monument, Usa, Nicole A. Caimi Aug 2019

A Comparison Of Cave Microbial Communities To Cave Roosting Bat Microbiota In El Malpais National Monument, Usa, Nicole A. Caimi

Biology ETDs

The arrival of white-nose syndrome (WNS), a devastating fungal disease, has highlighted the need to better understand bat microbiota and how bats acquire their microbiota. To address this need, we investigated how bat microbiota compare to microbiota from the cave walls in two El Malpais National Monument caves. The external surfaces of six roosting bats from each cave, representing four different bat species, and their associated microbial mats were sampled. One to three air samples were taken in each cave. Samples were sequenced using Illumina MiSeq sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene for bacterial diversity and the ITS region for …