Metacommunity dynamics at multiple scales

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My long-term research goal is to identify the factors that determine community structure and dynamics at multiple spatial and temporal scales. I approach this question through the lens of the metacommunity concept by investigating how dispersal between local communities could potentially influence local abiotic and biotic environmental processes. In the next 5 years, I will shift my research strategy by consolidating 4 streams of my past research: temporal dynamics, host-symbiont interactions, small mammal metacommunity dynamics, and DNA-based species identification and bioinformatics. I will focus on a study system that combines my past strengths in metacommunity ecology at multiple scales, but will apply them to a novel system: microbial metacommunities nested within a matrix of small mammal metacommunity of multiple host species. ***My short-term research goals are then 2-fold: 1) identify the structuring processes of such a system that is part of a long-term monitoring study in Algonquin Provincial Park, and 2) to experimentally verify these patterns by explicitly manipulating dispersal at several scales within this system. This proposal will quantify the effect of two of the main drivers of (meta-) community dynamics: species sorting through local environmental conditions and dispersal between sites within the landscape. The complexity of the host-microbiome interactions comes into play in the analyses because the local environmental effects can be mediated or influenced by seasonality, host species identity, and host-individual differences such as within-host temporal dynamics and interaction networks. In addition, microbiome metacommunity dispersal can be mediated or influenced by host metacommunity dispersal. The results of these studies will be compared to the results obtained with the Elements of Metacommunity Structure, a method that is less data intensive, but often used. Finally, the observational studies will lead to experimentally determining symbiont metacommunity dispersal rates by creating host individuals with strongly reduced microbiome populations and monitoring their recolonization rates. These studies will be done by a PhD student with 4 projects, and 3 MSc students.***Microorganisms are ubiquitous and important for the health of higher organisms. A metacommunity approach that explicitly considers all the different important scales is necessary, and this proposal is an important step in analysing these dynamics within a natural community. In addition to more experimental studies, the results will also lead to more applied studies investigating the interactions between microbiome species and endoparasites, which have been detected in the small mammals of Algonquin Provincial Park. A metacommunity approach in this context is even more warranted, because human induced habitat fragmentation can influence host-pathogen-microbiome interactions.*****