Controlled environmental systems for studying the impact of climate change on plants, animals, and host-microbe interactions

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Climate change is already changing the way of life of many organisms and impacting the outcomes of critical species interactions. This proposal will support the purchase of four reach-in Conviron GEN1000 environmental growth chambers for several research programs in the Department of Biology at UTM. Specifically, these chambers will enable researchers to dissect how infectious diseases emerge and evolve, how new communities are built, how symbiotic relationships are formed, and how forecast changes to our climate will impact all of these processes. Tightly controlled environmental growth chambers are also critical for several other research programs at UTM because they require pest-free environments with time-sensitive control of temperature, light, and humidity. Our multi-chamber architecture will provide the flexibility to accommodate these additional users while also conducting our own studies to explicitly test the impact of climate change on ecosystem function and species interactions. The growth chambers purchased through this grant are immediately required to replace essential but permanently damaged instruments that have begun to severely limit research productivity of several NSERC-funded research programs at UTM. In addition, they will enable research to tackle new collaborative research within the university, forge collaborations with other researchers across Canada, and establish international collaborative networks that apply the results of these studies to technological innovations and climate policy changes.