Serena DOOL Courriel : serena.dool(at)gmail.com Sujet : La métagénomique des guanos de chiroptères comme outil de surveillance de la santé des écosystèmes et des processus écologiques associés Dates : 1er juin 2020 – 31 mai 2022 Responsable CBGP : N. Charbonnel & M. Galan

Monitoring ecosystem health is critical for the early detection of imbalances associated with climate changes. Current approaches to do so measure the end-state but not the mechanisms driving patterns of changes.

During my post-doc, I will take advantage of the natural aggregation of pathogens occurring through trophic levels to develop an original method of ecosystem health survey. Indeed, plants form the base of ecosystem functioning and accumulate increased viral-load in response to climate-related stress. These viruses are ingested along with plant matter by insect herbivores who similarly have a viral-load and may be eaten by a secondary consumer, e.g. bats. I will collect bat guano which contains a snap-shot sample of the environment and use the latest in high-throughput sequencing protocols in metabarcoding and viral metagenomics to retrieve the DNA of insects, bats and viruses.

Temporal sampling across climatic zones and habitat types will ensure that complex and seasonal ecosystem processes are captured. I will use novel, sophisticated methods in ecological analyses to explore taxon diversity, abundance and associations, and how these change over time. By constructing weighted and multi-layer networks I will investigate the processes affecting seasonal ecosystem health in relation to habitat and climate.