Herbivores rely on symbiotic microbial communities to convert indigestible plant materials into accessible nutrients. Sloths are thought to be especially dependent on this symbiosis, as their mostly leaf-based diet severely limits their nutrient intake. Learn how Kim Dill-McFarland and her team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison used paired-end 16S amplicon sequencing on the MiSeq® System to explore their microbe-cycling hypothesis.