Meeting Abstract

78.5  Friday, Jan. 6  Broad patterns in the diversity of eukaryotic microbes WEGENER PARFREY, Laura*; KNIGHT, Rob; University of Colorado; University of Colorado, Howard Hughes Medical Institute lwparfrey@gmail.com

Microbial organisms make up the majority of organismal diversity on our planet and play a major role in biogeochemical cycling. Here we use high-throughput sequencing technology to assess broad patterns in the distribution of eukaryotic microbes across major habitat types, including soils and host-associated sites. We assess the environmental factors that drive diversity patterns across habitats. These data enable testing of the hypothesis that salinity and association with vertebrate hosts are the major drivers of diversity patterns in eukaryotic microbes as they are in bacteria and archaea. These data are also combined with community sequence data for bacteria to assess patterns of co-occurrence among taxa and gain an initial window into multilevel trophic dynamics in microbial communities.