Prey identity affects fitness of a generalist consumer in a brown food web.

The use of ever-advancing sequencing technologies has revealed incredible biodiversity at the microbial scale, and yet we know little about the ecological interactions in these communities. For example, in the phytotelmic community found in the purple pitcher plant, ecologists typically consider the bacteria as a functionally homogenous group. In this food web, bacteria decompose detritus and are consumed by protozoa that are considered generalist consumers.