Depends on how you count. A quick scan of the paper and my fairly fresh knowledge of academic sequencing prices suggests you could do the sequencing for around

Depends on how you count. A quick scan of the paper and my fairly fresh knowledge of academic sequencing prices suggests you could do the sequencing for around $3k, with reagents (assuming you don't count the cost of unused reagents). Add in airfare, room, and board to collect the ants and fungus and you're there. Not included: equipment, lab space, stipend (figure 6 months of one grad student, which is astonishingly fast, and that's already $12-15k), and tuition. If you were proposing the same thing to a funding agency like the NIH or NSF, you're looking at ~$60-100k, which still doesn't include a lot of the equipment. I would guess this project was pitched to crowdfunders as "I'm doing all these other experiments, but would also like to do sequencing".