FIG 3.

The cell acts as a centralized hub, connecting OTUs between bee-associated environments. The network generated through pairwise examination of environments sharing 99% identical OTUs. Edges weighted based on the proportion of total sequence abundance were observed in that interaction within the subsampled data set. Metrics were not weighted. Connectivity measurements (the number of OTUs shared between environments) show that the honey bee-associated environments sampled are all equally well connected. Centrality measurements (the number of shortest paths from one node to another that passes through this particular node) suggest that the cell serves as a hub through which bacteria may be transferred across environments.