Figure 1.

(a) Shannon diversity of bacterial OTUs on captive and wild juvenile boreal toads. Data shown for captive toads (n = 62) represent the communities sampled on day 4 in captivity and wild toads (n = 30) were sampled in a single high elevation wetland habitat in Colorado. Wild toads had a significantly more diverse skin microbiome compared with captive toads (ANOVA F = 41.47, p < 0.0001). (b) Beta-diversity of captive juveniles toads, wild juveniles, and environmental samples (water and sediment) from the wild. Bacterial communities on captive toads differ dramatically from wild toads and their environment (ANOSIM R² = 0.8554, p < 0.001). Wild toads were rinsed with sterile water to remove transient environmental microbes [18]. Each point represents the bacterial community, by sample type: red = captive juvenile skin (n = 42), green = wild juvenile skin (n = 42), blue = lake water (n = 13), orange = lake sediment (n = 4). Diversity patterns are visualized using principal coordinate plots of unweighted UniFrac distances.