Plants, Microbes and Global Change

Legacies of environmental contaminants on plant-microbe interactions in the gulf coast prairies and marshes

Environmental pollution is a major concern along the Gulf of Mexico. We aim to study the different levels of responses (flipside: levels of impacts) of oil and heavy metal pollution on soil microbes and coastal plants

1. Title: Decoupling taxonomic and functional diversity in soil microbes under different contaminant exposures

Ongoing

Funder: AAUW, Texas Research Fund

Soil microbial communities are highly diverse and this high diversity has long been assumed to arise from functional redundancy i.e., different co-existing microbial taxa perform similar functions, such that changes in community composition do not alter their functional attributes. Whether this is generally true or not, and how exposure to environmental disturbances can decouple or couple diversity-function relationship remains unclear. This project examines the generality of this long-held hypothesis that highly diverse communities exhibit functional redundancy on coastal marsh soil microbes, and the ecosystem outcomes when these communities are subject to on-going environmental pollution. We use both metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGS) and amplicon sequencing of 16s to characterize microbial communities and functions in the soil.

 

2. Title: Understanding the impacts of accumulation of heavy metals on plant physiology and fungal associates

2021- ongoing

Funder: AAUW, Texas Research Fund

Environmental pollution is a major concern along the Gulf of Mexico. We aim to study the different levels of responses (flipside: levels of impacts) of oil and heavy metal pollution on soil microbes and coastal plants.