Nicole Pietrasiak | Dryland soil cyanobacteria - Critical ecosystem engineers w/ unique biodiversity
Channel: CyanoWorld
Date: 11/08/2021

Nicole Pietrasiak - New Mexico State University, USA

Homepage: https://aces.nmsu.edu/academics/pes/nicole-pietrasiak.html
Twitter: https://twitter.com/drylandalgae
Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicole-Pietrasiak

Dryland soil cyanobacteria - Critical ecosystem engineers with unique biodiversity

Cyanobacteria play crucial roles for ecosystem health and soil quality in drylands globally. They are widely recognized as ecosystem engineers and keystone taxa, particularly for their contribution to the formation of biological soil crusts. Despite their importance, we have little knowledge of dryland soil cyanobacterial diversity and biogeography. A suite of major challenges explain this knowledge gap: 1) Drylands represent an expansive area of Earth’s land surface and this area is ever increasing while biodiversity studies are still sparse; 2) Although molecular soil biodiversity surveys of drylands reveal unique taxa of microbial groups including cyanobacteria, we still are limited in our ability to link sequence data to known taxa; 3) We face a bottleneck of taxonomic manpower to describe this diversity, and 4) Taxonomy funding support is in a global decline. Despite these challenges, exciting advances are being made in dryland soil cyanobacterial diversity. Using the polyphasic approach eleven new genera and numerous species have been described for the Americas alone during the last two decades. In my talk, I will showcase a selection of these charismatic dryland soil cyanobacterial taxa including species in Spirirestis, Mojavia, Roholtiella, Kastovskya, Symplocastrum, Chroakolemma, Myxacorys, Oculatella, Trichocoleus, and Aliterella. Each of these cyanobacteria are unique with special sets of traits adapted to the harsh dryland environment which warrant further physiological and biotechnological investigations. Thus, only continued efforts in describing cyanobacterial diversity will enable us to effectively study, inventory, and monitor these keystone organisms so we can then answer basic questions in physiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology of dryland soil cyanobacteria. 

This talk is part of the CyanoWorld online seminar series, hosted by Nicolas Schmelling and Ilka Axmann, and was held on Zoom on July 22nd, 2021.

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