SG: Microbial Community Coalescence: Disentangling Assembly Processes during Aquatic Mixing

SG：微生物群落聚结：水生混合过程中解开组装过程

• 批准号: 1754512
• 负责人: Justin Wright
• 金额: $ 19.97万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-03-01 至 2021-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1754512&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SG; Microbial; Community; Coalescence; Disentangling

Microorganisms encompass most of the diversity on Earth, and are responsible for maintaining the function of various ecosystems, such as in the guts of animals, in soil, and in water. This research is focused on understanding processes that control where microbes live and how they respond to changes in local conditions. A tree exists in a given location if it can survive both the environmental conditions and interactions with its neighbors at that location, and its seedlings may disperse to new locations with new environmental conditions. Unlike trees, microbes frequently migrate as whole communities and in tandem with their environment, often merging with other microbial communities along with their respective environments. For instance, wind movement of soil particles across the landscape or human handshakes result in novel contact of previously separated microbial communities. This process is termed community coalescence. The confluence of two water bodies is a clear example of community coalescence, resulting in a new, united environment with novel interactions among the previously separate microbial communities. This research will experimentally identify how aquatic microbial communities interact and respond to the merger under different environmental conditions. The goal of this project is to understand how microbial communities from distinct habitats interact under community coalescence, with the following specific objectives: (1) Characterize the membership of microbial communities in the field and their activity at three distinct aquatic environments where coalescence occurs. (2) In the laboratory, track microbial community membership and activity in response to experimentally-imposed coalescence. (3) Analyze experimental data in the context of the patterns observed in the field. Unraveling mechanisms that determine community membership following a coalescence event is difficult, since the abiotic and biotic factors are intertwined. In order to understand the true community ecology of microbes, it is necessary to separate the environmental and biological factors that ultimately determine which organisms persist and which do not. To address these fundamental ecological questions, the research team developed a new approach to directly measure the effects of environmental factors and biotic interactions, independently and in combination, on coalesced communities. This project addresses fundamental concepts in community ecology, dispersal of a massive number of microorganisms in the context of aquatic systems, and directly disentangles biotic and abiotic factors.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

微生物包含了地球上大部分的生物多样性，并负责维持各种生态系统的功能，例如在动物内脏、土壤和水中。这项研究的重点是了解控制微生物生存的过程，以及它们如何对当地条件的变化做出反应。如果一棵树能够在环境条件和与该位置邻近树的相互作用中生存，那么它就能在给定位置生存，它的幼苗可能会在新的环境条件下扩散到新的位置。与树木不同的是，微生物经常作为一个整体群落迁移，并与它们的环境相结合，经常与其他微生物群落以及它们各自的环境合并。例如，土壤颗粒在景观中的风运动或人类的握手导致先前分离的微生物群落的新接触。这个过程被称为群落合并。两个水体的汇合处是群落聚合的一个明显例子，在以前分离的微生物群落之间产生了新的、统一的环境和新的相互作用。本研究将通过实验确定不同环境条件下水生微生物群落如何相互作用和对合并的响应。本项目的目标是了解不同栖息地的微生物群落在群落聚合下如何相互作用，具体目标如下：(1)表征野外微生物群落的成员及其在三种不同的水生环境中发生聚合的活动。(2)在实验室中，跟踪微生物群落成员和活性，以响应实验强加的聚结。(3)结合现场观察到的模式分析实验数据。由于非生物因素和生物因素是相互交织的，因此在合并事件之后确定社区成员的机制是困难的。为了了解真正的微生物群落生态学，有必要将环境和生物因素分开，这些因素最终决定了哪些生物能够生存，哪些不能生存。为了解决这些基本的生态问题，研究小组开发了一种新的方法来直接测量环境因素和生物相互作用对合并群落的影响，无论是独立的还是联合的。该项目解决了群落生态学的基本概念，水生系统中大量微生物的扩散，并直接解开了生物和非生物因素。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Rare microbial taxa emerge when communities collide: freshwater and marine microbiome responses to experimental mixing

• DOI: 10.1002/ecy.2956
• 发表时间: 2020-02-07
• 期刊: ECOLOGY
• 影响因子: 4.8
• 作者: Rocca, Jennifer D.;Simonin, Marie;Wright, Justin P.
• 通讯作者: Wright, Justin P.