Pitcher plants provide an opportunity to examine how hosts with similar morphology and life-history traits that have evolved independently in dramatically different geographic locations, can nevertheless attract and cultivate similar communities within their structures. In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of plant-associated communities beyond just the organisms that are clearly symbionts or pathogens ( Bell et al., 2019 Leveau, 2019). These “true” pitcher plants have pitcher-shaped, single leaves containing small ecosystems with complex communities of arthropods and microbes ( Adlassnig et al., 2011). Overall, we saw convergence in richness and particular clades colonizing pitcher plants around the world, suggesting that these highly specialized habitats select for certain numbers and types of inhabitants.Ĭarnivorous pitcher plants are a clear example of convergent evolution, where the same form and function has evolved independently across three different lineages ( Albert et al., 1992). Our results showed similarity in richness with communities from other pitcher plants, and specific bacterial taxa shared among all three independent lineages of pitcher plants. follicularis-associated community diversity with that of Australian Nepenthes mirabilis, as well as a global comparison of Southeast Asian Nepenthes and North American Sarracenia. For turnover in composition, the variation in both bacterial and eukaryotic communities primarily differed with fluid acidity, fluid color, and sampling site. Bacterial and eukaryotic communities were correlated in both richness and composition however, the factors associated with richness were not the same across bacteria and eukaryotes, with bacterial richness differing with fluid color, and eukaryotic richness differing with the concentration of DNA extracted from the fluid, a measure roughly related to biomass. follicularis pitchers at two different sites. Here, we used metabarcoding to characterize the bacterial and eukaryotic communities living in C. It is the only species in the family Cephalotaceae and is restricted to a small region of Western Australia. The Albany pitcher plant, Cephalotus follicularis, has evolved cup-shaped leaves and a carnivorous habit completely independently from other lineages of pitcher plants. 2Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.1Department of Biological Sciences, Boise State University, Boise, ID, United States.

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