Dimensions US-BIOTA-Sao Paulo: Collaborative Research: Integrating Dimensions of Microbial Biodiversity across Land Use Change in Tropical Forests

热带森林是地球上最大的生物多样性储存库，但由于森林砍伐，热带森林正面临巨大威胁。该项目解决了微生物生物多样性如何应对森林砍伐并从森林中恢复这一至关重要的问题。微生物被认为是生态系统过程的驱动因素，并没有像植物和动物那样被广泛地描述。这个由美国和巴西组成的研究小组将把重点放在强效温室气体甲烷上，并沿着亚马逊雨林土地利用的梯度确定甲烷的生产者和消费者。该项目的教育工作将通过实时视频会议在巴西和美国的K-12学生之间建立生物保护关系，以培训本科生和指导研究生和博士后的研究。微生物研究对森林管理具有重要的保护和技术意义。土壤-大气界面中甲烷气体的直接和实时测量将与参与甲烷循环的微生物的靶向高通量核酸测序相结合，以评估亚马逊雨林两个不同地区的微生物的遗传、系统发育和功能维度。这项工作将导致迄今为止对任何热带生态系统的微生物多样性进行最广泛的调查，对微生物对土地利用变化的反应进行最全面的研究，并开发一种整合微生物多样性的新方法，从而准确预测森林砍伐对甲烷循环的影响。

Tropical forests are the largest reservoirs of biodiversity on Earth and are under great threat due to deforestation. This project addresses the critically important question of how microbial biodiversity responds to and recovers from deforestation. Microorganisms are regarded as drivers of ecosystem processes and have not been characterized as extensively as plants and animals. The US-Brazil research team will focus on the potent green house gas methane and identify the producers and consumers along gradients of land use in the Amazon rainforest. The educational efforts for this project will build relationships between K-12 students in Brazil and US for biological conservation through live video conferences for training of undergraduate students and research mentoring of graduate students and postdoctoral associates. The microbial studies have important conservation and technological implications for forest management. Direct and real time measurements of the methane gas in the soil-atmosphere interface will be combined with a targeted high throughput nucleic acid sequencing of microbes involved in the cycling of methane to assess their genetic, phylogenetic, and functional dimensions in two different regions of the Amazon rainforest. This work will result in the most extensive survey to date of the microbial diversity of any tropical ecosystem, the most comprehensive study of microbial responses to land use change ever documented, and the development of a novel approach for the integration of microbial biodiversity, allowing for accurate prediction of the effects of deforestation on the methane cycle.