Fig. 2
From: Social organization and physical environment shape the microbiome of harvester ants
Sample collection. (a) Map of the study site with the locations of the five nests that we excavated indicated with orange stars and the letter ID of each colony, which is colored according to their representation in Fig. 6. (b) the excavated nest of colony D; the white box indicates the approximate location where we sampled ‘near soil control’ for the chamber immediately to the right of the white box. (c) EHL crouching in the trench we dug to reach the nest chambers from the side, sampling soil from one of the chambers. A white box indicates the general area from which a ‘near soil control’ sample would be taken and the yellow rectangle shows the approximate location where ‘far control soil’ samples were collected. The entrance of the nest is indicated at the top right in a gray circle. (d) sampling soil from inside a chamber with a plastic spoon. We collected each chamber’s content, including (e) ants, (f) seeds, (g) brood, and (h) reproductives. All photo credits: Noa Pinter-Wollman