Sur le thème : Biosphere-geosphere interactions and microbial life in extreme environments.
Résumé
Microorganisms occupy virtually all available environmental niches including those previously thought of as uninhabitable. My research aims to understand the interactions between microorganisms and their environment across diverse Earth systems – focussing on how microbial communities and their metabolisms are shaped by environmental factors (including energy limitation and nutrient availability), and how this affects the cycling of nutrients and energy within and across ecosystems. A significant portion of my research is focussed on ‘extreme’ and climatologically sensitive environments including glaciers, permafrost, the atmosphere, and marine sediments. My future research program will build knowledge and quantitative tools to challenge and advance the current understanding of microbial activity and dormancy in natural environments. Microorganisms use dormancy as a survival strategy to persist throughout unfavorable changes in their environment. However, we lack fundamental knowledge on the prevalence, triggers and timescales of dormancy, and how these factors affect ecosystems and elemental budgets. I will address this by applying and integrating new interdisciplinary modelling approaches with experimental tools to measure microbial activity and associated biogeochemical transformations across Earth systems including the cryosphere. Understanding the interplay between microbial dormancy, ecological processes and biogeochemical cycles holds the key to understanding the co-evolution of life and our planet, and how life excels throughout global environmental changes.
Membres du jury
- Thierry BOUVIER, UMR MARBEC
- Françoise BRINGEL, Université de Strasbourg
- Karim BENZERARA, Sorbonne Université
- Jury members:
- Valérie MICHOTEY, Aix-Marseille Université
- Graeme NICOL, Université de Lyon
- Adrienne KISH, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris