New paper in Environmental Microbiology Reports!

Fungal diversity was tracked from milkweed (Asclepias spp.) leaves to monarch caterpillar (Danaus plexippus) frass with metabarcoding to understand potential adaptations of phyllosphere fungi to folivory. The number of fungal species decreased from leaves to frass, with no consistent species increasing in relative abundance, implying a random bottleneck occurs in caterpillar guts. However, Basidiomycota yeasts were notably prevalent in caterpillar frass, suggesting that the yeast growth form could be conducive to surviving caterpillar folivory.