Fig. 3: Sandhill crane subspecies differences in animal symbiont components of the lung mycobiome.

Comparison of geographic range, migratory distances, and potential animal symbiont and opportunistic pathogen composition of mycobiome between lesser and greater sandhill cranes. a Range map of approximate breeding locations and shared wintering sampling location of lesser (red) and greater (yellow) sandhill cranes. The Rocky Mountain population of greater sandhill cranes (source population for this study) is emphasized with a dashed outline. Migration stopover location in New Mexico where sampling occurred is indicated with a gray circle. Gray arrows emphasize relative differences in migratory distance. b Approximate mean migratory distances of lesser and greater sandhill cranes. c Relative abundance of pooled putative fungal animal symbionts assigned with FUNGuild⁵⁹ for greater (top) and lesser (bottom) sandhill cranes. Each bar along the x-axis represents a single sample. d Relative compositions of potential opportunistic pathogens in lung mycobiome of each subspecies. Widths of connecting ribbons between crane subspecies and fungal clade indicate the relative proportion of pathogen clade in total candidate pathogen zOTU pool of each crane subspecies. Ribbons connect fungal clades to zOTUs. The zOTUs are colored red if recovered from lesser sandhill cranes or yellow for greater sandhill cranes. Barplot on the right shows the percent prevalence of each zOTU by crane subspecies.