INS 3: Connecting Evolutionary and Ecological Perspectives to Find What Matters in Microbial Responses to Change

Monday, August 2, 2021

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM Pacific

Session Organizer(s)

Adriana Romero-Olivares

New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States

Moderator(s)

Adriana Romero-Olivares

New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States

Volunteer(s)

Savannah Fuqua

Point Reyes National Seashore Association
Point Reyes, California, United States

Session Co-organizers: Moira Hough, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, Elsa Abs, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA

Microbes are mediators of ecosystem processes and play a major role in determining their fate under global climate change. As climate changes, microbial influences on ecosystem processes will vary depending on both community and evolutionary dynamics. However, assessing and modeling the adaptive response of microbes to changing environments remains a major challenge because basic microbial eco-evolutionary questions have been overlooked, and thus, remain unanswered. For example, how are microbial ecological and evolutionary processes interconnected? How do each and their interactions change in response to climate change? How do their responses translate to ecosystem-scale impacts? Discussing these questions will allow us to better assess the consequences of microbial responses to ecosystem-scale processes under global climate change. The purpose of this session is to share insights to spark new ideas for connecting concepts from ecology and evolution to find what matters in microbial responses to global climate change. We will discuss new ideas related to microbial traits and ecosystem processes under the lens of evolutionary biology. We discuss perks of connecting ecology and evolution from a microbial and ecosystem-scale perspective. We explore how genes connect to traits in microbes and how these traits connect to ecosystem-scale processes in the context of climate change and evolutionary adaptation. Finally, we focus on how modelling can help us connect both perspectives to better predict the future of microbially-mediated biogeochemical processes.

Presentations:

ON DEMAND

Connecting ecology and evolution in mathematical models of soil microbial decomposition
Presenting Author: Elsa Abs – UC Irvine
ON DEMAND

Finding what matters in microbial response to environmental change
Presenting Author: Moira Hough – University of Arizona
ON DEMAND

Increasing metagenomic functional and metabolic diversity drives increasing methane feedbacks to climate with permafrost thaw
Presenting Author: Malak M. Tfaily – University of Arizona
ON DEMAND

Informing trait-based models with omics data: An example application modeling dynamic energy budgets in the rhizosphere
Presenting Author: Gianna Marschmann – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
ON DEMAND

Microbial traits under selection in a warming world
Presenting Author: Kristen M. DeAngelis – University of Massachusetts, Amherst
ON DEMAND

Studying the effects of microbial traits on carbon cycling in agricultural soils
Presenting Author: Jennifer Jones – Michigan State University
ON DEMAND

The consequentiality of microbial traits in disturbed environments
Presenting Author: Jessica Ernakovich – University of New Hampshire
ON DEMAND

Uncovering the hidden (genetic) diversity: Evolutionary processes driving trait selection in microbiomes
Presenting Author: Alexander B. Chase – Scripps Institution of Oceanography
ON DEMAND

Using evolutionary conservation of metabolism to predict changes in bacterial communities with rising temperatures
Presenting Author: Maria Rebolleda-Gomez – Yale University
ON DEMAND

We sequenced it but what does it do? Using nucleic acid sequences to predict ecosystem function
Presenting Author: Michael Shaffer – Colorado State University