Microbial succession of necrophagous beetles and soil during small carcass decomposition in Michigan

When carrion decomposes outdoors, several groups of necrophagous insects colonize and consume the body. As this occurs, decomposition fluid and organic material are introduced into the soil beneath the carcass, leading to a change in the soil microbial communities and the microbiomes of the invertebrate scavengers. During the spring, summer, and fall seasons of one calendar year, beetles and soil samples from underneath decomposing swine carcasses were collected to investigate internal beetle and soil microbial communities. All samples were processed by extracting the DNA and sequenced using 16S amplicon based high-throughput sequencing. Analyses will be conducted to investigate the relationships that emerge as a result of niche overlap between these two communities. Preliminary analyses suggest that fall soil communities changed significantly across time and follow previously reported trends. During the beginning stages of decomposition, the most dominant bacterial phyla has been reported to be Firmicutes, but as decomposition progresses the communities shift and Proteobacteria becomes the more dominant phyla. There also seems to be an observable difference in microbial community structure between the control samples and samples taken from underneath carcasses.