An evolutionary landscape to better predict our future climate. Soil microbial communities are the most complicated and difficult to study on Earth, but their effects on our climate are profound. This

Description

An evolutionary landscape to better predict our future climate. Soil microbial communities are the most complicated and difficult to study on Earth, but their effects on our climate are profound. This project will examine the evolution of microorganisms and their viruses in soil using novel methods. It will uncover how the evolution of one microbial species influences the evolution of other community members. It will also apply a new model of evolution to the viruses that infect these microorganisms, constructing a viral ‘tree of life’. This improved fundamental understanding of soil communities will be used to study climate feedback from permafrost wetlands, a key and poorly constrained input of global climate models, improving predictions of our future climate.. Scheme: ARC Future Fellowships. Field: 0605 - Microbiology. Lead: A/Prof Benjamin Woodcroft