Soil microbiomes' roles in urban forest restoration
As urbanization is increasing globally, the need for effective urban restoration is paramount to maintaining urban biodiversity, human health and welling, and ecosystem functions/services. Despite microbiomes' importance to these desired outcomes, restoration efforts often prioritize aboveground communities, overlooking these crucial belowground "hidden players" that underpin healthy ecosystems. Microbes are also vital to the health of both plants and animals and these interactions are especially vital in stressful environments, common in urban areas (e.g., tolerance of extreme conditions).
Leveraging an established network of restored urban forests across Aotearoa New Zealand, we aim to deepen our understanding of how aboveground restoration affects soil biodiversity and explore the pathways through which humans and wildlife interact with and potentially benefit from this biodiversity. Using next-generation sequencing techniques, we have characterized soil microbiomes from 82 sites along an aboveground restoration chronosequence. For 30 of these sites, we also characterized leaf litter microbiomes and aerobiomes (airborne microbiota). ​​
Using these data, we are working to answer questions such as (1) how does time since restoration impact soil microbial diversity and function? (2) how do landscape features (e.g., area, connectivity, matrix effects) impact soil microbiomes in restored urban forest? (3) what features (e.g., environmental, landscape, biotic) impact leaf litter microbiomes and aerobiome communities? and (4) how do soil, leaf litter and air microbiomes differ?
Microbial Legacy: How anthropogenic habitat fragmentation impacts microbiomes and their interactions with plants
Because of the many roles microbes have in ecosystem functions and processes, inclusion of a microbial perspective in the study of habitat fragmentation is crucial for predicting the consequences of this increasing form of disturbance for communities and ecosystems. Further, microbes can indirectly affect ecosystem services and functions through their roles in the health and productivity of macro-organisms. Fragmentation-related effects on microbiomes may cascade to affect macrobial host performance in these landscapes, necessitating an understanding of both how fragmentation affects microbial communities and how these changes, in turn, affect other organisms within remnant habitat fragments.
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The effects of habitat fragmentation on microorganisms has recently gained attention due to technical advances and growing body of evidence that, similar to marco-organisms, the consequences of fragmentation can alter microbial communities. My PhD work aimed to understand these effects by (1) adding to the growing knowledge base of how habitat fragmentation changes microbial diversity and community composition in both soil and phyllosphere microbiomes, (2) how these legacy effects may alter plant-microbe interactions, and (3) how changes to these interactions scale up to herbivores and seed dispersers using field surveys, microbiome sequencing, bioinformatics, and manipulative greenhouse experiments.
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South Florida pine rocklands: a "found" system for studying the effects of anthropogenic habitat fragmentation​​​
​The pine rocklands is a critically imperiled ecosystem, which hosts many endemic species, that exclusively occurs in South Florida, the Florida Keys, and some of the Caribbean islands. This habitat is threatened due to increased urbanization, especially in Miami-Dade County, where due to higher elevation compared to other habitats, much of the pine rocklands was targeted for development. Currently, only ~2% of pine rocklands' historic range remains outside the Everglades National Park. The pine rocklands is an open canopy pine savanna habitat that is characterized by its occurrence on oolitic limestone, frequent fire, a canopy dominated by South Florida Slash Pine (Pinus elliottii var densa), a patchy subcanopy of palms and small woody shrubs, and a diverse understory of herbaceous plants.​​
Miami-Dade County Pine Rockland fragment.
Using this "found" experiment, we are studied the effects of habitat fragmentation on microbiomes as well as their cascading effects on macro-organisms, especially native plants and herbivores. Further we hope this work aids in future conservation and restoration of this incredible habitat.