Microbial biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships in marine reducing habitats

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Over the past 2 decades, marine ecology has seen a shift in focus from documenting biodiversity to wanting to understand the importance of biodiversity to the services that marine ecosystems contribute to human society and to our planetary support system. Ecologists assign functional traits or 'ecosystem job descriptions' to species and groups of species that define their role in ecosystems, from photosynthesis, nutrient cycling and predation to the production of fish stocks. On the other hand ecologists who study marine microorganisms have been comparatively slower to make this change in perspective. In part, this is because new, high throughput gene sequencing methods are providing marine microbiologists with information at a level that surpasses the development of meaningful ecological interpretation. This research program will focus on marine reducing habitats, where changes in dissolved oxygen cause shifts in microbial composition and metabolism. These gradients of environment change provide opportunities to directly observe relationships between microbial diversity, and the metabolic processes that microbes contribute to ecosystem function. Over the past several years my laboratory has developed or implemented a number of analytical tools that will be brought to bear on this question.