Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/Y001249/1
Understanding the mechanisms of microbial community assembly, stability and function
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Dr CG Knight, The University of Manchester, Earth Atmospheric and Env Sciences
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor RD Bardgett, The University of Manchester, School of Biological Sciences
- Co-Investigator:
- Dr K Coyte, The University of Manchester, School of Biological Sciences
- Co-Investigator:
- Dr S Nixon, The University of Manchester, Earth Atmospheric and Env Sciences
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor MA Brockhurst, The University of Manchester, School of Biological Sciences
- Grant held at:
- The University of Manchester, Earth Atmospheric and Env Sciences
- Science Area:
- Earth
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Panel D
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Science Topics:
- Community Ecology
- Biodiversity
- Community structure
- Ecosystem function
- Environmental stressors
- Microbes
- Population dynamics
- Population Ecology
- Biodiversity
- Ecosystem function
- Evolutionary ecology
- Evolutionary processes
- Population dynamics
- Population modelling
- Environmental Microbiology
- Microbial biodiversity
- Microbial communities
- Responses to environment
- Abiotic stress (microbes)
- Responses to environment
- Theoretical biology
- Mathematical modelling
- Simulations
- Theoretical biology
- Abstract:
- Microbial communities inhabit almost all natural environments and perform a wide range of important natural processes. For example, microbial communities decompose organic matter and drive biogeochemical nitrogen and carbon cycles. Despite the critically important functions of microbial communities in ecosystems, our understanding of how these communities assemble and function is limited. This is in part because of the enormous diversity and complexity of such microbial communities, where a pinch of soil can contain thousands of species and billions of individual cells. To help us to understand this complexity we will build mathematical models to predict the assembly and stability of microbial communities. We will then test these models using controlled lab experiments with a simplified decomposer community; and finally, we will use our models to analyse the assembly of real-world microbial decomposer communities in the natural environment. Using this approach, we will answer three questions: First, how the individual interactions microbes have with each other determine the behaviour of the overall community they form together. Second, how variation in the environment (e.g. changes in temperature) affect this community level behaviour. And finally, how the functions that a microbial community performs together - for instance in the carbon or nitrogen cycles - can be predicted from genes that the individual microbes carry. Overall, our project will deliver a predictive understanding of how and why environmental microbial communities look and function as they do in nature, and thus enable better management of these critical components of natural ecosystems.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/Y001249/1
- Grant Stage:
- Awaiting Start Confirmation
- Scheme:
- Standard Grant FEC
- Grant Status:
- Accepted
- Programme:
- Pushing the Frontiers
This grant award has a total value of £845,647
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DI - Staff | DA - Estate Costs | DA - Other Directly Allocated | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £192,308 | £185,271 | £99,402 | £278,655 | £57,259 | £14,202 | £18,548 |
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