New #preprint alert! What are the core symbionts of lichens? TLDR: we analyzed >400 lichen metagenomes from around the world and found that 4 bacterial groups are as frequent in lichens as the alga, one of the two main partners in the symbiosis. 🧵1/11 biorxiv.org/content/10.110… We aimed to create a global census of lichen-associated organisms based on shotgun metagenomics, and independent from biases associated with culturing and PCR amplification. We used nearly every publicly available lichen metagenome plus de novo data 2/11