MICROSUDAQUA: South-American aquatic bacterial diversity and biogeography

• Grant number: 20/03716-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: June 01, 2021
• End date: December 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Ecosystems Ecology
• Agreement: Universidad de Antioquia (UdeA)
• Principal Investigator: Hugo Miguel Preto de Morais Sarmento
• Grantee: Hugo Miguel Preto de Morais Sarmento
• Principal researcher abroad: Juan Pablo Niño García
• Institution abroad: Universidad de Antioquia (UdeA) , Colombia
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde (CCBS). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• City of the host institution: São Carlos
• Associated researchers: Clara María Arboleda Baena ; Maria Carolina Garcia Chaves
• Associated research grant(s): 22/14160-9 - Strengthening the collaboration between Latin American researchers working in aquatic microbial ecology through the MicroSudAqua Network, AP.R SPRINT

Abstract

We propose a collaboration between the Universidade Federal de São Carlos and Universidad de Antioquia, bringing together the expertise of researchers and students of the two Institutions to promote the generation and compilation of a large microbiome database from many aquatic ecosystems across South-America. This will allow to elucidate large-scale patterns of South American aquatic microbial life, which are key players of all biogeochemical cycles and to reconstruct the bacterial South American biogeography. This topic was proposed as a priority-working group in the first 4-day µSudAqua workshop held in Uruguay in December 2017, where several researchers coming from all Latin America discussed and defined priorities to advance Aquatic Microbial Ecology studies at regional scale. As the 2 PIs of this proposal were group leaders in the µSudAqua workshop, this proposal will enhance and solidify the ongoing work, discussions and outputs. During the development of this project we propose i) to use individual microbiome datasets already generated by the participants of µSudAqua, ii) to complete this dataset by filling the geographical gaps of South American microbial diversity iii) to compile, analyze and consolidate the largest geo-referenced freshwater database of aquatic microbial diversity: the µSudAqua database that covers several South American biomes and, iv) to generate scientific products with impact on the international scientific community, on subjects related to aquatic microbial ecology. This proposal will enhance a first world top journal publication on µSudAqua database that will consolidate the network. The curated georeferenced database will open many avenues of research. Several hypotheses will be tested with that database, from a metacommunity perspective, such as microbial biogeography, community ecology processes, keystone species and interaction networks. All these topics will be addressed, as well as new sampling to cover the geographical gaps in distribution of sampling points. This proposal will put South America on the frontier of knowledge in the aquatic microbial ecology research field, something that will not be possible to accomplish through individual and local efforts. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

METZ, SEBASTIAN; HUBER, PAULA; MATEUS-BARROS, ERICK; JUNGER, PEDRO C.; DE MELO, MICHAELA; BAGATINI, INESSA LACATIVA; IZAGUIRRE, IRINA; CAMARA DOS REIS, MARIANA; LLAMES, MARIA E.; ACCATTATIS, VICTORIA; et al. A georeferenced rRNA amplicon database of aquatic microbiomes from South America. SCIENTIFIC DATA, v. 9, n. 1, p. 12-pg., 2022-09-13. (20/03716-0)