Fig. 5

High heterogeneity of the nifH-transcribing community in patches of established Azteca alfari and A. constructor colonies at the time of sampling. Taxonomic assignments of OTUs are summarized on the order level based on BLASTP analysis. On the x-axis, every bar represents the diazotrophic community (DNA, bottom) and the actively transcribing community (RNA, middle) of one EP sample, grouped by ant species. The y-axis shows the relative read abundance of taxonomic orders. Triangles denote samples in which the most abundant transcribing order is not the most abundant one on the diazotrophic community level. The top graph shows the corresponding ¹⁵N atom percent excess (APE) after samples were incubated with ¹⁵N₂. The dashed line denotes the median APE of all measured EP samples