“…A large number of studies investigating the gut microbiome of birds and reptiles have sampled bacteria from the cloaca (Allegretti et al., ; Barbosa et al., ; Bowman & Jacobson, ; Charruau, Pérez‐Flores, Pérez‐Juárez, Cedeño‐Vázquez, & Rosas‐Carmona, ; Cooper, Needham, & Lawrence, ; D'Aloia, Bailey, Samour, Naldo, & Howlett, ; Dewar, Arnould, Krause, Dann, & Smith, ; Dewar et al., ; Dickinson, Duck, Schwalbe, Jarchow, & Trueblood, ; van Dongen et al., ; Ganz et al., ; Hoar, Whiteside, Ward, Inglis, & Morck, ; Klomp et al., ; Kreisinger, Čížková, Kropáčková, & Albrecht, ; Lamberski, Hull, Fish, Beckmen, & Morishita, ; Lobato, Geraldes, Melo, Doutrelant, & Covas, ; Lombardo et al., ; Lucas & Heeb, ; Martin, Gilman, & Weiss, ; Matson, Versteegh, van der Velde, & Tieleman, ; Maul, Gandhi, & Farris, ; Merkeviciene et al., ; Mills, Lombardo, & Thorpe, ; Moreno et al., ; Ruiz‐Rodríguez, Lucas, Heeb, & Soler, ; Ruiz‐Rodríguez, Soler, et al., ; Santoro, Hernández, & Caballero, ; Santos et al., ; Stanley, Geier, Chen, Hughes, & Moore, ; Stenkat, Krautwald‐Junghanns, Schmitz Ornés, Eilers, & Schmidt, ; Xenoulis et al., ). Cloacal sampling is widely used because it is straightforward to perform, allows repeated sampling of individuals and affords the possibility of reliably obtaining samples from all individuals at the same time.…”