RUI: Biodiversity of the terrestrial cyanobacteria of the Atacama Desert, Chile

在杰弗里·约翰森（Jeffrey Johansen）博士的指导下，约翰·卡罗尔大学（John Carroll University）获得了一项奖项，以研究生长在地球上最干燥的栖息地之一——智利高海拔沙漠的土壤外壳中的蓝藻的多样性和生物地理学。研究小组将在该地区广泛旅行，取样土壤以分析蓝藻（蓝绿藻）。土壤蓝藻是一种光合微生物，在许多沙漠中至关重要，因为它们有助于防止土壤侵蚀。阿塔卡马是地球上最干燥、最恶劣的环境之一。我们将采用微生物和分子相结合的方法来调查该地区土壤中的大多数物种。这是一个重要的生物多样性项目，因为严酷的环境意味着我们分离和描述的许多物种可能对科学来说是新的。由于这些培养物将被存放在公共文化收藏中，它们将可供科学界进一步研究和技术开发。新的分类群将被描述，当他们满足系统发育物种概念的标准，一个现代的方法来研究生物多样性，将被应用到这些蓝藻的相关谱系。该项目将促进两所北美大学、两所智利大学和一所德国大学之间的合作。本项目将资助至少两名研究生。包括六个本科生暑期奖学金，以及支持两名高中生进行暑期研究。该项目中的蓝藻和土壤将被纳入科学实验室，在俄亥俄州克利夫兰市现有的一个面向西班牙裔中学生的推广项目中。我们将为几个公共研究机构提供资助，包括德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的藻类文化收藏、杨百杨大学的无血管隐藻植物标本馆、智利国家自然历史博物馆、德国Göttingen大学的藻类文化收藏。新的DNA序列将储存在基因库中，这是一个被生物学家广泛使用的在线存储库。教育和研究网站将包括所有收集到的物种的图片和描述。

An award has been made to John Carroll University under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey Johansen to study the diversity and biogeography of cyanobacteria that grow in soil crusts in one of the driest habitats on earth, the high altitude deserts of Chile. The team of researchers will travel widely in this region to sample soils for analysis of the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). Soil cyanobacteria are photosynthetic microorganisms critically important in many deserts because they help prevent soil erosion. The Atacama is one of the driest and harshest environments on the planet. We will use a combination of microbial and molecular methods to survey the majority of species in the soils of this region. This is a significant biodiversity project, as the harshness of the environment means that many of the species we isolate and describe will likely be new to science. Because the cultures will be deposited in public culture collections, they will be available to the scientific community for further research and technology development. New taxa will be described when they meet the criteria of the phylogenetic species concept, a modern approach to the study of biodiversity that will be applied to related lineages of these cyanobacteria. The project will facilitate collaboration between two North American universities, two Chilean Universities, and a German University. At least two graduate students will be supported by this project. Six undergraduate summer fellowships are included, as well as support for two high school students to conduct summer research. Cyanobacteria and soils from this project will be incorporated into science laboratories in an existing outreach program to Hispanic middle school children in Cleveland, Ohio. We will contribute to several public research depositories, including the Culture Collection of Algae at the University of Texas at Austin, the Herbarium for Nonvascular Cryptogams at BYU, the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural in Chile, the Culture Collection of Algae at the University of Göttingen, Germany. New sequences of DNA will be deposited in GenBank, an online repository widely used by biologists. Educational and research websites will be include images and descriptions of all species collected.