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

气候变化已经改变了许多生物的生活方式，并影响到关键物种相互作用的结果。该提案将支持为UTM生物系的几个研究项目购买四个接触式Conviron GEN1000环境生长箱。具体来说，这些室将使研究人员能够剖析传染病如何出现和演变，新社区如何建立，共生关系如何形成，以及预测气候变化将如何影响所有这些过程。严格控制的环境生长室对UTM的其他几个研究项目也至关重要，因为它们需要无虫害的环境，并对温度、光照和湿度进行时间敏感的控制。我们的多室架构将提供灵活性，以适应这些额外的用户，同时也进行我们自己的研究，明确测试气候变化对生态系统功能和物种相互作用的影响。通过这笔赠款购买的生长室立即需要更换基本但永久损坏的仪器，这些仪器已经开始严重限制UTM几个NSERC资助的研究项目的研究生产力。此外，他们将使研究能够解决大学内的新合作研究，与加拿大各地的其他研究人员建立合作，并建立国际合作网络，将这些研究的结果应用于技术创新和气候政策变化。

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.