Miss Laura Franssen1, Dr Kimberley Warren-Rhodes2, Dr Kevin Lee1, Dr Donnabella Lacap-Bugler1
1Auckland University Of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand, 2NASA Ames Research Centre, Mountain View, United States of America
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile, is the oldest and driest hot desert on Earth. Receiving < 25 mm of rain annually, facilitating a decadal-long dryland ecosystem. Microbial communities in the desert have adapted over this time to survive the constant low water availability, high salinity, and high UV irradiance. However, a major disturbance event occurred in 2015 due to flooding (last significant rainfall occurred in 1971), causing more than the annual amount of rainfall to the area in a 48-hour period. This presented a unique opportunity to contribute to the ongoing question of how dryland ecosystems respond to perturbations. To investigate this, a meta-analysis was conducted on two sets of studies which provided data before and after the rainfall recorded in 2015. Using a combination of Illumina miseq data, the DADA2 Pipeline, phyloseq and ggplot2 packages were used to carry out a microbial community analysis. Results showed Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria were the most abundant and stable bacterial taxa across vertical soil columns and time periods. However, the most apparent change in structure was seen when comparing sub-surface communities to those at a lower depth. More research is underway to understand the composition and function of the communities, and why there are shifts as a result of changes in the environment. This will aid in understanding the resilience and resistance of the communities to these increasing climatic disturbances. The Atacama Desert is an excellent model for these investigations, as it can predict ecological processes for other dryland ecosystems, including Mars.
Biography:
I am currently a PhD student at the Auckland University of Technology. My research interests include microbial ecology, molecular genetics, and astrobiology. My current research is working toward investigating the impact environmental disturbances have on microbial communities found in dryland ecosystems. My research also aims to contribute to the optimisation of finding microbial life on exoplanets, such as Mars.