Unexpected Diversity during Community Succession in the Apple Flower Microbiome
I recently had the pleasure of reading about the succession of microbes in flowers as they emerge, open, and eventually fall from the tree. This interesting paper (published by the Handelsman group and found here:http://mbio.asm.org/content/4/2/e00602-12) used 454 pyrosequencing to identify bacterial community members in flowers across 5 different trees throughout time. I especially liked figure 4 (below): They used the appearance of different groups at different parts of the season to identify "poineer", early, mid, late, climax and "generalist" microbes. Although the list of sequences or microbes in each of these groups isn't provided, they go on to state: “Late” group members peaked when flowers had been open for 3 days and included a high abundance of Lactobacillus and Acetobacter taxa, whose occurrences aligned with previously reported conditions of flower decomposition by yeast" I was surprised that beyond a casual mention in the paper...