DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Do environmental constraints on photosynthetic symbionts alter the community structure of their fungal partners? A case study with canopy lichens.

包括人类在内的大多数生物都与其他物种密切相关。当这种伙伴关系是强制性的，一个物种的能力，以容忍一个特定的环境可能会限制其伙伴物种可以生活。地衣被认为是这种限制的一个很好的例子。所有地衣都由两种相互依赖的生物体组成：真菌和真菌。地衣已经适应了地球上一些最恶劣的环境，并在一些生态系统中发挥着重要作用。尽管地衣无处不在，但人们对它们藻类的多样性以及这些藻类的环境耐受性是否限制了地衣的生长环境知之甚少。该项目的目标是确定光的可用性如何影响藻类和地衣的健康和分布。了解相互依赖的物种群落如何沿着环境梯度变化是预测这些相互作用将如何应对全球环境变化的必要前提。这项研究将提供跨学科的分子生物学培训研究生学习生态学。这种培训促进了跨学科的交流，并将使未来的合作更加广泛。该项目还支持一名本科生在林冠生态学方面进行独立研究。 参加独立的研究项目可以培养学生的批判性思维和沟通能力，并建立自信心。将作出特别努力，从科学领域代表性不足的人口中招收一名学生。此外，研究人员还参与了与北卡罗来纳州科学与数学学院的持续合作，以开发使用地衣教授生物学关键概念的教育单元。更具体地说，该项目的目标是确定森林中的环境梯度是否对真菌和藻类伙伴施加了不同的限制，对地衣多样性产生了级联效应。分子群落分析方法将被用来与地衣形成真菌和藻类的群落组成的光和温度梯度在北卡罗来纳州的树冠。通过同时测量真菌和藻类的多样性，研究人员可以测试藻类的光照限制是否会限制它们的真菌伴侣。 研究结果将被用来构建一个一般性的随机社区集会的互惠种群模型。 然后，这个模型可以更普遍地应用于解释环境变化将如何约束或促进其他互惠网络的结构和发生。

Most organisms, including humans, live in close association with other species. When such partnerships are obligatory, the ability of one species to tolerate a particular environment may limit where its partner species can live. Lichens are thought to provide a good example of this type of constraint. All lichens consist of two, mutually-dependent organisms: a fungus and an alga. Lichens have adapted to some of Earth's harshest environments and play an important role in several ecosystems. Despite lichens' ubiquity, relatively little is known about the diversity of their algae and whether the environmental tolerances of those algae constrain where lichens can grow. The goal of this project is to determine how light availability impacts the health and distribution of algae and lichens. Understanding how communities of mutually-dependent species shift along environmental gradients is a necessary precursor to predicting how these interactions will respond to global environmental change. This research will provide interdisciplinary training in molecular biology to a graduate student studying ecology. Such training facilitates cross-disciplinary communication and will enable a broader variety of future collaborations. The project also supports an undergraduate student to conduct independent research in canopy ecology. Participating in an independent research project develops a student's critical thinking and communication skills and builds self-confidence. Special effort will be made to recruit a student from a demographic under-represented in the sciences. In addition, the researchers are involved in an ongoing partnership with the North Carolina School of Science and Math to develop educational units that use lichens to teach key concepts in biology.More specifically, the goal of this project is to determine whether environmental gradients in forests impose differential constraints on fungal and algal partners, with cascading effects on lichen diversity. Molecular community profiling methods will be used to relate community composition of lichen-forming fungi and algae to light and temperature gradients in tree canopies in North Carolina. By concurrently measuring fungal and algal diversity, the researchers can test whether light constraints on algae subsequently limit their fungal partners. Results will be used to construct a general model of stochastic community assembly of mutualist populations. This model can then be applied more generally to interpret how environment changes will constrain or facilitate the structure and occurrence of other mutualistic networks.