Porcupine in canopy latrine in Montane Cloud Forest, Costa Rica.
Ken Belanger has been awarded a Picker ISI micro grant for $3,000 to provide support for his project, “Investigation of Microbiome Composition of Rainforest Canopy Latrines Using Short-Read Whole Genome Sequencing.”
The award from the Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute will be used to investigate the animal source and microbial composition of fecal and soil samples from tropical rainforest canopy sites. Recent research has shown that some sites in the canopy are used as “latrines” by a diversity of animal species. Funds from this award will be used for metagenomic sequencing and computational comparison of fecal and soil samples to better understand which organisms use latrines, how their deposits influence the microbiome present in the canopy, and how these microbes contribute to the canopy ecosystem.