Savvas Phd Proposal Approved
Our group member, Savvas, has just received great news. His proposal at the 3rd Call for H.F.R.I. Doctorate Scholarships got approved! His PhD is hosted at the Biology Department of the University of Crete and is an interdisciplinary project co-supervised by Prof. Panagiotis Sarris, Dr Evangelos Pafilis and Prof. Ioannis Antoniou.
Here is the abstract:
Microbes account for the majority of biomass and biodiversity on earth and have been acknowledged as drivers of biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem functions, such as nitrogen cycle and primary productivity, respectively. Ecosystem function, a macroecological property of ecosystems, has recently been studied on the microbial scale through metabarcoding and metagenomics. This PhD project aims to use available microbiome data of the diverse ecosystems of the island of Crete in order to define its macroecology based on the soil microbial interactome. Crete being a “miniature continent” and a hotspot for biodiversity with complex geodiversity, has been studied extensively regarding its ecotopes and threatened ecosystems. However, its microbial diversity still remains unexplored. This is the first time that the Cretan microbiome will be studied as a whole regarding functions of its ecosystems. Ecosystem functions will be investigated with the “bottom-up” approach; microbial interactomes will be constructed, keystone taxa will be identified and environmental vulnerability to changes (e.g aridification) will be simulated. Conversely, the “top-down” approach will be carried out by using remote-sensing spatial data, like fluxes of primary productivity, vegetation cover and habitat loss. There is a ground opportunity to integrate and correlate both approaches through the availability of microbiome and remote-sensing data to provide a unified view. Data integration will provide the basis for causal analysis to overcome spurious correlations by identifying causal relations among biogeochemical fluxes (e.g carbon cycle), metabolic composition of microbes, microbial interactome vulnerability and keystone taxa. This project will assist decision-making in conservation action planning for threatened ecosystems of Crete and will deliver a straightforward workflow that will allow the replicability of this approach to different ecosystems.
He will use PREGO along with IMBBC - HCMR data combind to explore the Cretan Microbiome.
