OOS 76

Trait-Based Ecology at the Micro-Scale

Trait-based approaches at the microscale hold tremendous potential to contribute significant theoretical advances to the field of ecology over the next 100 years. Functional traits include physiological, morphological, and behavioral characteristics that influence the fitness of organisms under various environmental conditions. Accordingly, traits provide a mechanistic foundation for community ecology and can be useful for studying processes from evolutionary to ecosystem scales. A major challenge for trait-based ecological studies is that traits can be difficult and time consuming to measure. This is especially true at the microscale where it can be hard to identify important features and trait characterization is most straightforward in single-species cultures, which represent a small fraction of microbial diversity. Microbial trait characterization has been revolutionized by rapid advances in technology that have provided microbial ecologists with the unprecedented opportunity to make phenotypic inferences from uncultured organisms using single-cell and meta- ‘omics data. The combination of culture-based and ‘omics approaches enables trait-based ecology to be applied at scales ranging from local to global and to exceptionally diverse communities. This symposium will highlight the work of ecologists using trait-based approaches to improve our understanding of the microbial world. These insights lay the foundation for investigating how microbial diversity has evolved through time and the eco-evolutionary feedbacks that will continue to shape and maintain this diversity into the future. Applied at the microscale, trait-based approaches have the potential to transform our understanding of microbial communities and processes as well as contribute to the development of mechanistic, trait-based frameworks. Trait-based frameworks have great potential to advance ecology towards a more predictive science and may hold the key to linking biodiversity to ecosystem function.