Running title : Introducing mothur Appropriate Section : Methods

1 Department of Microbiology; University of Massachusetts; Amherst, MA 2 Department of Microbiology & Immunology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 3 Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 4 Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC 5 Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 6 Department of Soil, Water, and Climate, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 7 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK 8 Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS 9 Environmental Science and Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 10 Department of Animal Science, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia 11 Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics, Graz University of Technology, Austria 12 Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rogue, LA