Dr Chris Hardy1, Dr Gavin Rees2, Mr Leon Court1, Mr Garth Watson2, Dr Matthew Morgan1
1CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra, Australia, 2CSIRO Land and Water, Albury, Australia
Microscopic eukaryotes (protists, ciliates, fungi, algae, and small invertebrates) are highly abundant in ecosystems, yet relatively little is known about their diversity, food web linkages, and interaction with the environment. Difficulty in adequately surveying these taxa has meant that biodiversity assessments either under-represent them, use aggregated data, or are restricted to small numbers of relatively well characterised indicator species. High-throughput sequencing of DNA extracted from the environment is increasingly being used to generate alternative and more comprehensive assessments of the diversity and condition of the microbiota within ecosystems. Our approach to exploring biological diversity from deeply sequenced and complex environmental samples in the Murray-Darling Basin entails:
1: Production of reference and experimental data sets that inform QA/QC and that enable comparison and harmonisation across different environments
2: Integrating sequence-related phylogenetics, bioinformatics and statistical analyses required for handling environmental DNA-linked datasets
3: Delivery of outcomes through collaborative projects delivering to land managers and environmental policy makers
Hypotheses on how microeukaryote communities respond and evolve at ecosystem scales are explored in the context of the discovery that organisms within Australian semi-arid floodplain soils can survive prolonged periods of drought and inundation and appear resilient to large fluctuations in water availability.
Biography:
Dr Chris Hardy’s research interest is the application of a multidisciplinary approach (ecology, biogeochemistry, genomics, molecular biology and bioinformatics) to understand the factors that determine the likely responses of ecosystems to perturbations and use this information to develop next generation biological controls and DNA-based environmental monitoring tools. Orcid ID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7419-566X