Collaborative Research: Testing the Drivers and Scale-dependency of Plant-fungal Bacterial Community Co-assembly Across the Arctic

建议获奖摘要北极植被正在迅速变化，以应对大规模的北极变暖。 该提案的研究人员认为，只有通过探索植物、土壤微生物和土壤真菌群落如何相互作用并共同进化，我们才能真正了解植被在未来可能如何变化。 利用在北极地区收集的3500多个土壤样本，沿着同一地点的环境和植物数据，研究人员将采用新的遗传和统计技术来了解复杂的植物-微生物-真菌关系。 虽然这项工作解决了一些基本的生态问题，它也将提供深入了解控制决定如何植被可能会在不久的将来改变。新墨西哥州的大学是一个认证的西班牙裔服务机构和1600本科生物学专业，超过30%是西班牙裔。 Taylor和Takacs-Vesbach将为这些学生和其他代表性不足的学生提供项目相关的研究经验。 泰勒和Takacs-Vesbach目前通过生物系的三个STEM项目指导学生。 UNM少数民族获得研究职业（MARC）计划主任提供了一封支持信，承诺帮助该计划招募MARC计划学者进行微生物组方法培训。该提案包括在阿拉斯加大学培训一名女博士后科学家，费尔班克斯。研究人员提出了一系列假设，重点是在北极五个生物群落的社区组装（分散，环境过滤，竞争，促进，生态位分区，中性过程）的生态驱动因素。 他们将使用沿着沿着两个纬度断面收集的3500多个土壤样本，每个断面包括所有五个北极生物气候分区，从北到南跨越1700公里。 利用他们广泛的采样和下一代测序衍生的数据，社区组成的土壤真菌和细菌，已经在手，结合在同一地点的植物群落的数据（这将与植物系统发育标记的有限测序增强），调查人员试图研究的基本模式，在每个三个王国在分层的空间和生态尺度的社区集会。

Proposed Award AbstractArctic vegetation is rapidly changing in response to broad-scale Arctic warming. The investigators of this proposal argue that only by exploring how plants, soil microbes, and soil fungal communities interact and evolve together can we truly understand how vegetation may change in the future. Using over 3500 soil samples that have been collected across the arctic, along with environmental and plant data at the same sites, the investigators will employ new genetic and statistical techniques to understand the complex plant-microbe-fungal relations. While the work tackles a number of basic ecological questions, it will also provide insights into the controls determining how vegetation may change in the near future.The University of New Mexico is a certified Hispanic Serving Institution and of the 1600 undergraduate Biology majors, over 30% are Hispanic. Taylor and Takacs-Vesbach will provide project related research experience to these and other under-represented students. Taylor and Takacs-Vesbach are currently mentor students through three STEM programs based in the Biology department. A letter of support is provided by the Director of the UNM Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) Program, which commits him to helping the program recruit MARC Program Scholars for training in microbiome methods. The proposal includes for the training of a female post-doctoral scientist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.The investigators pose a series of hypotheses that focus on the ecological drivers of community assembly (dispersal, environmental filtering, competition, facilitation, niche partitioning, neutral processes) across five Arctic biomes. They will use over 3500 soil samples that have been collected along two latitudinal transects, each of which includes all five Arctic bioclimatic subzones and
spans 1700 kilometers north to south. Using their extensive sampling and next-generation-sequencing-derived data on community composition of soil fungi and bacteria that are already in hand, combined with data on plant communities at the same sites (which will be augmented with limited sequencing of plant phylogenetic markers), the investigators seek to examine the fundamental patterns of community assembly in each of the three Kingdoms at hierarchical spatial and ecological scales.