CAREER: When do mycorrhizal fungi influence plant community dynamics?

人们越来越认识到微生物不仅仅是疾病的媒介，而且在植物和动物的日常健康中起着重要的积极作用。这种范式的变化很大程度上是由新的DNA测序技术的可用性推动的，这种技术能够准确量化通常隐藏的微生物生物多样性。虽然已经有大量关于微生物组对人类健康影响的研究，但了解微生物共生在构建自然生态系统中的作用是当前生态学的研究前沿。该项目将建立在一个长期研究项目的基础上，该研究人员使用基于DNA的技术来建立植物-微生物合作的最常见形式之一-菌根共生的多样性和生态学的关键模式。利用这些知识，该项目将确定菌根共生如何影响自然植物群落的多样性、生产力和组成。鉴于超过90%的植物参与菌根共生，更好地了解这些相互作用将有助于科学家和土地管理者维持强健和有弹性的生态系统。此外，本项目将支持开发一个综合教学和研究计划，培训本科生使用公开的DNA序列数据和公民科学数据建立真菌的物种分布模型，然后公开传播这些信息，以帮助激发公众科学参与。虽然分子工具最终能够越来越准确地描述菌根真菌群落的多样性和结构，但这些新信息尚未与现有的植物生态学理论框架很好地结合起来。该项目将利用加州沿海地区已建立的菌根真菌研究系统，作为温室、田间和模型实验的基础，旨在确定菌根真菌在当地、景观和区域尺度上对植物物种共存产生强烈影响的机制和条件。这将通过温室研究（控制菌根真菌的存在并观察其对植物竞争的影响）、田间试验（测试不同环境条件下菌根共生对有机物分解的影响）和模拟建模（预测菌根共生对大时空尺度上植被发育模式的影响）相结合的方式进行。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

There is a growing recognition that microbial organisms are not simply agents of disease, but play important positive roles in the everyday health of plants and animals. Much of this paradigm change has been driven by the availability of new DNA sequencing technologies that enable accurate quantification of the normally hidden microbial biodiversity. While there has been a great deal of research on the effects of the microbiome on human health, understanding the role of microbial symbiosis in structuring natural ecosystems is a current research frontier in ecology. This project will build on a long-term research program by the investigator who has used DNA based techniques to establish key patterns in the diversity and ecology of one the most common forms of plant-microbe cooperation - mycorrhizal symbiosis. Using this knowledge, the project will determine how mycorrhizal symbiosis affects the diversity, productivity, and composition of natural plant communities. Given that over 90% of all plants engage in mycorrhizal symbiosis, better understanding of these interactions will help scientists and land managers sustain robust and resilient ecosystems. In addition, this project will support development of an integrated teaching and research program to train undergraduates to use publicly available DNA sequence data and citizen science data to build species distribution models for fungi, and then publicly disseminate this information to help inspire public science participation. While molecular tools have finally enabled increasingly accurate description of the diversity and structure of mycorrhizal fungal communities, this new information has not been well integrated with existing theoretical frameworks for plant ecology. This project will use an established research system on mycorrhizal fungi in coastal California as the basis for greenhouse, field, and modeling experiments designed to identify the mechanisms and conditions under which mycorrhizal fungi strongly influence plant species coexistence at local, landscape, and regional scales. This will be carried out through a combination of greenhouse studies that manipulate the presence of mycorrhizal fungi and observe the effects on plant competition, field experiments testing the effects of mycorrhizal symbiosis for organic matter decomposition under different environmental conditions, and simulation modeling to predict the effects of mycorrhizal symbiosis on patterns of vegetation development over large spatial and temporal scales.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.