The role of interspecific interactions in shaping adaptive evolution in soil microbial communities

Understanding how microbial communities evolve and function is regarded as one of today's greatest challenges. Microbial communities are highly diverse and complex, yet this same complexity makes it extremely challenging to understand how a community might respond and adapt to change. Experiments using simple 2-species communities have shown that species interactions can affect evolutionary responses to the abiotic environment, yet we have little idea about how selection operates within communities in more realistic, natural settings.

This project will test how species interactions in complex microbial communities shape evolutionary responses to environmental change, focusing on agriculturally-relevant soil microbial communities. Soil microbial communities are key drivers of agricultural processes such as nitrogen provisioning, protecting crops from pathogens and heavy metal bioremediation. Hence, understanding how these communities adapt to environmental change is vital. The student will perform experimental evolution in real-time with natural microbial soil communities and test the effects of various agricultural stressors such as pesticides, fertilizers and antibiotics on community structure and function.