The communities of organisms which inhabit soils hold sway over numerous processes upon which we depend, driving the cycling of elements which sustain life, but also compromising food security and human health. Understanding the mechanisms driving existing soil biota community diversity and function across disparate climates and ecological communities is key in order to determine future ecosystem responses to global change. My research aims to address this, by using field-based sampling of invertebrate and microbial communities, coupled with eDNA metabarcoding techniques as a means to reveal patterns in biodiversity assemblages across a broad range of habitats.
I am joining FABio as a Marie Sklodowska Curie Research Fellow, where I will be working with Regan to use Species Distribution Modelling techniques to determine association patterns within soil microbial communities, and using this to improve our understanding of the effects of global change on their functioning. I previously undertook my PhD in collaboration with the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership (SEARRP) at the University of the West of England, Bristol, prior to working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Evolution and Biological Diversity (EDB) Lab at the University of Toulouse.