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作为初级生产者或捕食者对生态系统的健康产生重大影响，也可以作为共生体或病原体对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数量相对较少，而使用环境样本的DNA序列数据推断的未描述物种数量要多得多，两者之间存在差异。尽管显然需要更多的努力来描述这些未被充分研究的谱系，但在美国，接受过这项工作培训的研究人员群体正在减少，并且分散在各种科学领域。该研讨会将汇集专注于微生物真核生物谱系系统生物学的科学家与专门研究这些生物的生态学和病理学的科学家。拟议的活动将确定加速物种发现和描述的策略，并为合作调查开辟新的途径。受邀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组成部分，以扩大参与。两场研讨会将于2019年8月和11月举行，以吸引美国和国际原生生物学家的多元化社区。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，这些研讨会将广泛宣传，以最大限度地促进社区参与和有效的思想交流。第一次面对面会议将在国际原生生物学会和欧洲原生生物大会联合会议之后举行，为期一天。它将解决社区驱动的资源，可以简化整合系统学和微生物真核研究的其他领域。第二次面对面会议将在马里兰大学举行，为期两天。它将探索基于进化枝的社区优先事项和持续整合研究工作的机会，以照亮微生物真核生命之树的黑暗领域。这两个研讨会的在线和现场部分的成果将作为真核微生物学杂志的白皮书和国际原生生物学会的口头报告进行传播。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。

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.