Mangrove PhD research
Mangroves are ecologically and globally important, and communities around the world depend on mangroves for coastal protection, carbon sequestration, and food resources associated to mangrove-dependent fisheries. Mangrove forests support a high diversity of microorganisms present in the soil, the water column, and most notably as thick biofilms on aerial and belowground roots.
Microbes perform many beneficial functions for their mangrove hosts such as helping to acquire nutrients, resist diseases and adapt to salinity stress, but the majority of microbes are unknown and uncharacterized. Mangroves are under great threat from deforestation, pollution, and climate change. A better understanding of the relationship between mangrove health, anthropogenic-related stress, and microbial diversity and composition are required to anticipate changes to ecosystem functions and services.
My research in the Bowman Lab examines changes of microbial composition and biodiversity in mangrove forests ecosystems, and the conservation implications of anthropogenic change as well as means to mitigate it. The main topics of my research are:
- Impacts of land use changes, particularly associated to shrimp aquaculture facilities adjacent to mangrove forest, on the microbial diversity, nutrient cycling, and water quality.
- Understanding microbial partnerships in a time of coastal change: the microbial diversity of pristine and perturbed mangroves across different compartments (i.e. water, soil, roots, leaves).
- Developing a plant-microbial model to enhance mangroves’ capacity to tolerate stress. Evaluating secondary metabolites that can enable mangroves immunity to pathogens and ability to capture carbon and enhance other ecosystem services.
Publications:
Erazo, N. G., and Bowman, J. S. (2021). Sensitivity of the mangrove-estuarine microbial community to aquaculture effluent. IScience, 24(3).
Erazo, N. G., Dutta, A., and Bowman, J. S. (2021). From microbial community structure to metabolic inference using paprica. STAR protocols, 2(4), 101005.
In submission:
Erazo, N., Bogdanov, A., Allard, S., Feller, I., Dutta, A., Azam, F., Jensen, P., Bowman, J., Impacts of microbial endophytes on propagule development in response to salinity stress and pathogen-induce impairment in a model mangrove system. PNAS, submitted.