Collaborative Proposal: Workshop to stimulate research on microbial eukaryotic diversity; August, 2019, Rome, Italy; November, 2019, Washington, D.C.

微生物真核生物在真核生物生命树中拥有最大的多样性，但仍未得到充分的研究。这些原生生物谱系可以对作为初级生产者或捕食者的生态系统的健康以及作为共生体或病原体的其他物种产生重大影响。此外，最近的研究表明，正式描述的微生物真核生物物种的数量相对较少，而利用环境样本的DNA序列数据推断的未描述物种的数量要高得多。尽管显然需要更多的努力来描述这些研究不足的谱系，但美国接受过这项工作培训的研究人员群体正在减少，分散在不同的科学领域。这个工作坊奖将把专注于微生物真核生物谱系的系统生物学的科学家与那些专门研究这些生物的生态学和病理学的科学家聚集在一起。拟议的活动将确定加速物种发现和描述的战略，并发现合作调查的新途径。被邀请的演讲者和参与者将来自不同的社区和职业阶段，讲习班活动将包括一个重要的在线部分，以扩大参与。2019年8月和2019年11月将举行两次研讨会会议，以吸引美国和国际原生动物学家的不同社区。在每次面对面会议之前，将举行一系列四个以主题为基础的互动网络研讨会，这些研讨会将进行广泛宣传，以最大限度地提高社区参与和思想交流的效率。第一次面对面会议将在国际原始学学会和欧洲原始学大会联席会议之后举行，为期一天。它将解决社区驱动的资源，这些资源可以简化系统学和微生物真核研究的其他领域的整合。第二次面对面会议将在马里兰大学举行，为期两天。它将探索基于分支的社区优先事项和机会，以持续整合研究努力，以照亮微生物真核生物生命树中的黑暗区域。两个研讨会的在线和面对面部分的结果将作为白皮书在《真核微生物学杂志》上传播，并作为对国际原生生物学会的口头陈述。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Microbial eukaryotes harbor the greatest diversity within the eukaryotic tree of life yet remain understudied. These protist lineages can have large impacts on the health of ecosystems as primary producers or predators and on other species as symbionts or pathogens. Moreover, recent research has demonstrated a disparity between the relatively low number of formally described microbial eukaryote species and the much higher number of undescribed species inferred using DNA sequence data from environmental samples. Despite the clear need for more effort dedicated to characterizing these understudied lineages, the community of researchers in the United States who are trained for this work is dwindling and scattered among a variety of scientific fields. This workshop award will bring together scientists who focus on the systematic biology of microbial eukaryote lineages with those who specialize in the ecology and pathology of these organisms. The proposed activities will identify strategies that will accelerate species discovery and description and uncover new avenues for collaborative investigation. Invited speakers and participants will be drawn from diverse communities and career stages, and workshop activities will include a significant online component to broaden participation. Two workshop meetings will be held in August 2019 and November 2019 to engage the diverse community of US and international protistologists. Each in-person meeting will be preceded by a series of four topic-based, interactive webinars that will be advertised widely to maximize community participation and the efficient exchange of ideas. The first in-person meeting will be held for one day directly following the joint meeting of International Society of Protistology and European Congress of Protistology. It will address community-driven resources that can streamline the integration of systematics and other fields of microbial eukaryotic research. The second in-person meeting will be held for two days at the University of Maryland. It will explore clade-based community priorities and opportunities for the sustained integration of research efforts to illuminate dark areas in the microbial eukaryotic tree of life. Outcomes of the two workshops' online and in-person components will be disseminated as a white paper within the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology and as an oral presentation to the International Society of Protistology.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.