BEE: Testing a phylogenetic trait framework for soil microbiomes

Soil microorganisms provide essential services to society including the regeneration of soil fertility, decomposition of waste, and carbon storage. It has become increasingly clear that the composition of soil microbial communities (microbiomes) influence soil functioning and so, the provisioning of these services. However, soil microbiomes are so incredibly diverse and spatially variable that our understanding of how their composition relates to their functioning remains elusive.

To address this knowledge gap, the research will conduct field and lab experiments on a model organism to test a predictive framework that links microbial characteristics (traits) to its distribution and functioning in soil and thus, will advance the ability to predict how soil microbiomes will respond to future environmental changes. An additional impact of this work is the development of a model organism for terrestrial bacteria and the production of genomic and culture resources that will be widely shared and available for future studies.

The project will also provide support for numerous trainees at a Hispanic-serving and Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander serving institution. Finally, to disseminate the importance of microbial research to a public audience, science-education interns will develop and implement a middle school curriculum on the role of microorganisms in ecosystems.

The project will integrate evolution and ecology by spanning two endpoints along a continuum – on the one hand, the macroevolution of bacterial traits and on the other hand, the ecological role of a bacterium in the carbon cycle. Specifically, the research will investigate whether the macroevolutionary distribution of traits can predict the distribution and functioning of microbial communities.

The research will (1) identify the phylogenetic structure of traits in an abundant surface soil bacterium, Curtobacterium; (2) quantify the relationship between the phylogenetic structure of Curtobacterium traits and its biogeography; and (3) test whether Curtobacterium trait distributions are linked to functioning in the field. The work will employ a combination of physiological assays on cultured isolates, phylogenetics and population genomic analyses, biogeographic surveys, transplant and common garden experiments, and metagenomically-enabled activity measurements.

This project is being jointly funded by the Population and Community Ecology Cluster and the Systematics and Biodiversity Science Cluster in the Division of Environmental Biology at NSF.

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.