Microbiomes in the Anthropocene: A genes to ecosystem approach to understanding how global change is shaping microbial community dynamics

We are in the Anthropocene, a period when human activity is a dominant influence on the Earth’s climate and environment. Anthropogenic change threatens ecosystem services by pushing environments around the world to new extremes and exposes organisms to unprecedented levels of stress. Microbiomes and their interactions with plants are important to our future on Earth; they not only underpin many ecosystem services, but their incredible diversity and long evolutionary history provides a deep well of biological innovation and function that can ameliorate host stress. In this talk, I will highlight how my lab uses a multiscale approach to understand (1) how microbiomes can mediate plant responses to global change, (2) mechanisms plants can use to regulate microbial symbiosis to match changing environmental conditions, and (3) how stress reshapes microbiome community dynamics and function. The research will emphasize the importance of integrating plant-microbial interactions with key ecological and evolutionary concepts (e.g., keystone species, community stability and assembly, habitat connectivity, context-dependency, gene family expansions, and gene duplications) to develop a holistic perspective of resilience of microbiomes and their interactions with plants in our changing world.

Speaker: Michelle Afkhami, University of Miami

Note time change.  Originally listed for 12:30.