Microbial systems, including the community of microbes that form the aquatic food web within the leaves of the pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea, have been important models for ecological studies. This is because they are easily replicated in the laboratory and have rapid dynamics that allow questions to be addressed in a matter of days that would take weeks to years with other types of organisms. To date, studies of the community ecology of microbial systems have been limited to those bacterial species that can be grown in the lab (culturable on agar), which is estimated to be less than 1% of the diversity within a community. The use of molecular biology techniques has revolutionized this field; microbial systems can now be studied by examining the genomes of all of the bacteria within these systems (metagenomics). This project will use metagenomics as a tool to identify bacterial species in a series of experiments designed to test questions about the dynamics of the food web of the pitcher plant system, and how this system responds to different types of impacts, including invasion by novel species. This project will also test whether the results of prior work (with only culturable bacteria) on the interactions and diversity of this system are robust when all bacteria in the system are considered. This project will train a female graduate student and undergraduates in molecular biology, community ecology and experimental design. This cross-disciplinary training will prepare them for careers multiple areas of the sciences.
