First Place, 2019

This image shows a network of gut bacteria of tadpoles from nine ponds in East Texas. Each color is a pond, and each dot is a different species of bacteria. Lines connecting dots mean that the same bacterial species was shared between tadpoles from different ponds. This is one of the results from research showing that the environment the host comes from is more important in determining its microbiome than the species of the host itself. If the environment did not matter, we would not see the clusters that appear here.

Credit:
Decio T. Correa
Ecology, Evolution and Behavior Graduate Student