CAREER: MECHANISMS OF ASSEMBLY AND COEXISTENCE IN SPECIES-RICH MICROBIAL COMMUNITIES

职业：物种丰富的微生物群落的组装和共存机制

• 批准号: 2236782
• 负责人: Leonora Bittleston
• 金额: $ 86.92万
• 依托单位: Boise State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-01-01 至 2028-12-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2236782&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; MECHANISMS; ASSEMBLY; COEXISTENCE; SPECIES

Animals and plants have evolved alongside microscopic organisms. Many of these microbes can provide nutrition and protection against harmful pathogens. Researchers use microbes to improve healthcare and agriculture; however, it is difficult to create stable communities with many different types of microbes like the ones found in nature. This project aims to study how these communities form and how we can create and maintain them in controlled settings. The researchers will use principles from ecology to test how different factors, such as the type of nutrients, the environment, and the types of microbes added, affect the stability of the communities they create in the lab. This CAREER project will involve students in science across Idaho, especially students from low-income, rural, and first-generation backgrounds including students from the largest community college in Idaho. They will also provide training for teachers through a workshop and create educational materials using common bacterial species and 3D-printed tools.In order to achieve the project’s research goals, the team will characterize environmental axes of coexistence in species-rich synthetic communities, investigating how phylogenetic and functional diversity, environmental filtering, and priority effects influence richness and ecosystem outcomes. The team will use a Modern Coexistence Theory (MCT) modeling approach to partition coexistence mechanisms for species-rich communities and will compare empirical tests of theory with full-community results. The experiments will primarily use well-characterized pitcher plant microbial communities, but also extend to the sagebrush leaf microbiome to involve a local species of conservation concern. This project is jointly funded by the Population and Community Ecology Cluster in the Division of Environmental Biology and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.

动物和植物与微生物一起进化。研究人员利用微生物来改善医疗保健和农业，其中许多微生物可以提供营养并提供保护，但很难像所发现的那样建立具有多种不同类型微生物的稳定群落。该项目旨在研究这些群落是如何形成的，以及我们如何在受控环境中创建和维持它们，研究人员将利用生态学原理来测试不同因素（例如营养物类型、环境和类型）的作用。添加微生物的数量，影响他们在实验室创建的社区的稳定性将涉及爱达荷州的科学学生，特别是来自低收入、农村和第一代背景的学生，包括来自爱达荷州最大的社区学院的学生。通过研讨会对教师进行培训，并使用常见细菌物种和 3D 打印工具制作教育材料。为了实现该项目的研究目标，该团队将描述物种丰富的合成群落中共存的环境轴，研究系统发育和功能多样性如何影响， 环境的该团队将使用现代共存理论（MCT）建模方法来划分物种丰富群落的共存机制，并将理论的实证检验与整个群落的结果进行比较。利用特征明确的猪笼草微生物群落，还扩展到山艾树叶微生物组，以涉及当地的保护物种。该项目由环境司人口和社区生态集群共同资助。生物学和刺激竞争性研究的既定计划 (EPSCoR)。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。