Response of Bacterial Diversity of Increased Productivity

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9907797BohannanMany ecologists believe that productivity (the rate at which energy flows in an ecological system) is one of the most pervasive influences on animal and plant diversity. However, very little is known about the relationship between productivity and microbial diversity. Recent preliminary observations in aquatic mesocosms suggest that bacterial diversity may respond to changes in productivity very differently from plant and animal diversity. The research conducted under this Postdoctoral Fellowship Starter Grant will confirm these preliminary observations and also test whether the pattern observed was 1) an artifact of sample size or experimental design, 2) due to the different relative scales at which bacterial diversity and plant and animal diversity were measured, or 3) due to a fundamentally different relationship between productivity and diversity for bacteria. This will be accomplished by estimating bacterial diversity in additional mesocosm samples and in samples from ponds that vary in productivity, and by repeating the mesocosm experiments on a smaller scale and with a broader range of productivity levels. Microorganisms represent most of the earth's biodiversity and play a crucial role in almost all environmental processes. Understanding how microbial diversity is regulated in nature is thus of great importance. This research has the potential to generate fundamental new knowledge about the most diverse and most abundant organisms on earth.