Figure 2

Phenology of common bacterial genera associated with T. septentrionalis garden workers, outside workers and reproductive ants as determined by 16S-amplicon 454-sequencing.

Percent sequence-reads for the common bacteria for the ant castes were averaged by month. Reproductive males are not included in this figure because males were only collected in June. Arrows indicate the month of important life history stages in the annual reproductive cycle of T. septentrionalis. Garden and outside workers showed relatively constant bacterial-community profiles, except for increases of Spiroplasma in March and Pseudonocardia in August. Reproductive females showed initially (June) a high percentage of sequence-reads for Pseudonocardia, but percentage of Pseudonocardia sequence-read decreased in females that had not dispersed from the nest by late August.