International Collaboration on Mycorrhizal Ecological Traits: i-COMET

Fungi are a key component of soils and soil health, responsible for many of the functions and services that soils provide. These include nutrient cycling and food productivity, and prevention of soil erosion and flooding. The are difficult organisms to work with, however, because they are often cryptic, and microscopic, so we know rather little about where they are and what they are doing
Baas-Becking's well known phrase "Everything is everywhere, but, the environment selects." is a simple statement often made about microbial communities. It is based on the assumption that microbes are small and disperse easily. Where they land, the local biotic and abiotic environment determines their survival. But we do not know how realistic this is. Laboratory and field experiments are contradictory: recent evidence suggests that fungi with aerial spores that should wind-disperse easily, are in fact highly structured, and that other fungi that live entirely below ground, are nevertheless aerially dispersed. This is one example of trait variation that may have significant effects on ecosystem function, but for which we lack truly global, comparable data.
In this project, we seek to bring together people from across the globe, and from across the spectrum of diversity, to develop a global-scale experiment to measure this key fungal trait. In this way we will gain novel insights into a global network of microbial function and into global networks of research.

Who will benefit from this research?

The main targets for Impact of this work are academics seeking to develop high quality interdisciplinary research in biodiversity. The immediete benefit will accrue to participants in the workshop. Longer term beneficiaries will be the team members, mentees and other collaborators of the participants.

Through Ada Lovelace Day, our science communications project partner, the collaboration will eneable a wider range of academic and other types of group to develop high quality interactions.


How will they benefit?

There are two primary benefits of this project. First is the initiation of a signifcant global collaboration on fungal traits for soil health. Global problems require global solutions, and by explicitly setting out to create a global collaboration, the group can maintain activity grow to be a major resource for science.

Second is the social and academic networking tools developed within the workshop. Through our link to Ada Lovelace Day, this will further be developed into a suite of tools that any group seeking to develop effective communication within diverse groups can use to foster sustainable communications.