Analysis of Microbiomes for Captive and Wild Caught Adult \u3ci\u3eAmblyomma maculatum\u3c/i\u3e

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) involve classes of students addressing real-world research questions without predefined outcomes. BIOL380/381, Research in Pathogen Biology, was designed as an advanced CURE for 300-level Biology students at ODU. In semester 1 of the 2020-2021 cycle, we addressed two main research questions associated with tick microbiomes. The microbiome of colony ticks (raised in the lab) and ticks from Mackay Island (MI), Smith Island (SI) and Centerville (CV) were examined to determine how their operational taxonomic unit (OTU) compositions differed from each other. An OTU is a grouping of closely related taxa found within the microbiomes of these ticks. The Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCOA) showed differences in grouping between the MI, SI, CV, and colony ticks. Our PERMDISP and PERMANOVA analyses indicated there were differences among groups due to dispersion, but it was ambiguous whether the differences were also due to centroids (OTU composition). This led us to conduct further analyses that tested for the difference between OTU compositions of wild caught ticks (MI, SI, and CV collectively) and colony ticks. When wild caught ticks were grouped together, there was a clear difference in the OTU composition between wild caught and colony ticks