EAGER: Competition and interactions among predators of bacteria in microbial loop dynamics

EAGER：微生物循环动力学中细菌捕食者之间的竞争和相互作用

• 批准号: 1649741
• 负责人: Henry Williams
• 金额: $ 29.98万
• 依托单位: Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-09-01 至 2022-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1649741&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Competition; interactions; among; predators

The National Science Foundation uses the Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) funding mechanism to support exploratory work in its early stages on untested, but potentially transformative, research ideas or approaches. This EAGER project was awarded as a result of the invitation in the Dear Colleague Letter NSF 16-080 to proposers from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to submit proposals that would strengthen research capacity of faculty at the institution. The project at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University aims to study the ecological role of predatory bacteria, Bdellovibrio-like organisms (BALOs), in marine waters. The project outcome can reveal interactions not only amongst the bacterial predators but also among the predators and their prey bacteria under various environmental factors. The scientific objectives of this study are to: investigate how viruses, Halobacteriovorax, and heterotrophic protists effect one another in decreasing bacterial abundance; quantify the relative proportion of all three mortality mechanisms on bacterial loss; determine environmental effects on predatory activities of protists, viruses, and Halobacteriovorax; and model population dynamics of predators and prey. The approach to accomplishing these objectives is to measure loss rates of a virus, heterotrophic protist, and a Halobacteriovorax on the mortality of bacteria in laboratory microcosms and field studies. The novelty and innovativeness of this approach is that while many of these components have been examined independently, this would be the first time that mortality is quantitatively partitioned for this complex system. The expected high-payoff from this innovative Early-Concept for Exploratory Research project is transformative results that dramatically increase understanding of tri-trophic planktonic interactions that significantly influence oceanic biogeochemical fluxes of carbon and nutrients through the microbial loop and reveal Halobacteriovorax as a major bacterial predator.

美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）使用早期概念赠款进行探索性研究（急切）资金机制，以在未经测试但可能具有变革性的研究思想或方法的早期阶段支持探索性工作。这项渴望的项目是由于尊敬的同事信函NSF 16-080向历史悠久的黑人学院和大学提出的提议提出的提议提出的提议，以提高该机构的研究能力。佛罗里达农业和机械大学的项目旨在研究海洋水域中掠食性细菌，bdellovibrio样生物（Balos）的生态作用。 该项目结果不仅可以揭示细菌捕食者之间的相互作用，而且还可以在各种环境因素下捕食者及其猎物细菌之间的相互作用。这项研究的科学目标是：研究病毒，卤叶翅目和杂营的生物如何在降低细菌丰度方面相互影响；量化所有三种死亡率机制与细菌损失的相对比例；确定对生物，病毒和卤叶片的掠食性活动的环境影响；并建模捕食者和猎物的种群动态。实现这些目标的方法是测量有关细菌在实验室缩影和现场研究中细菌死亡率的病毒，异养原则和卤代叶酸的损失率。这种方法的新颖性和创新性是，尽管这些组件中的许多已独立研究，但这将是该复杂系统第一次对死亡率进行定量分配。探索性研究项目的创新早期概念的预期高收入是变革性的结果，可以极大地增加对三型浮游生物相互作用的理解，从而通过微生物循环显着影响碳和养分的海洋生物地球化学通量，并揭示出卤杆菌作为主要细菌饲养者。