Profile

Overview

I am a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow based in the Environment & Sustainability Institure. I am interested in the ecological and evolutionary drivers underpinning microbial cooperation and exploitation. Following my early work on plant life history evolution, I became fascinated with the role of microbes in determining ecosystem and human health. This led me to move to the University of Exeter in Cornwall as a research fellow, where I developed an independent research program applying evolutionary theory to predict the consequences and trajectory of environmental challenges on cooperation, both within and across trophic levels. Understanding when and why different species cooperate allows us to predict how bacteria explore their environment and to harness these interactions to our own benefit.

Qualifications

2006 – PhD Evolutionary Ecology (University of Fribourg, Switzerland)

2001 – MSc Ecology (University of Groningen & Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

2000 – BSc Ecology (University of Groningen, The Netherlands)

Career

2021: UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus.

2013 – 2021: PDRF, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus.

2009 – 2012: PDRA, University of Leiden, The Netherlands.

2008 – 2009: Career break.

2008: Botanical consultant for BHP Billiton & Société des Mines de Fer de Guinée (July-Sept).

2006 – 2007: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) research fellow, University of Oxford.

Research group links

• Microbial Evolutionary Ecology

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Research

Research interests

• Species interactions and community dynamics

• Cooperation

• Experimental evolution

• Life-history evolution

• Plant–microbe interactions

• Social Evolution of metal-remediation

Research projects

My current research aims at understanding when and why different bacterial species cooperate. Microbial interactions are often mediated by secretion of extracellular ‘public-goods’– metabolically costly compounds that can benefit neighbouring individuals. The production of these public-goods can simultaneously benefit the community as well as the producer. Hence, the system is open to invasion by ‘cheats’ who contribute less than their fair share. This raises an important outstanding question – what are the key drivers maintaining community-wide public-goods cooperation? This is non-trivial as bacterial cooperation has important implications for ecosystem functioning and human health. Projects on public-goods cooperation and exploitation include:

(1) Social remediation of toxic metals

The production of toxic mine waste is a global problem. There is a clear need for sustainable remediation strategies that allow for rapid recovery of mining sites with minimal intervention. Unsurprisingly, researchers have started using microbes to clean up mine waste, mainly in the context of single species. But this is too simplistic: microbes work much better as a community in a ‘division of labour’. Mine wastes typically contain multiple toxic metals that pose serious threats to ecosystems and human health. When different species specialise to detoxify different metals, this is predicted to improve remediation. However, not all individuals might pay their fair share and cheat the system. This classic problem is well understood in evolutionary biology for single species, but not at the community level. Using the production of metal-chelating siderophores as a focal trait, our research aims to understand the conditions under which different species and individuals work best together to detoxify metals with the aim to develop sustainable remediation strategies.

(2) Plant-microbe interactions

Evidence is mounting that microbe-plant feedbacks are ubiquitous and a crucial determinant of their combined functioning. For example, plants and microbes produce signals that affect each other’s behaviour, often to mutual benefit. However, we have little understanding of how these interactions are affected by cooperation and conflict within the interacting microbial communities. This project aims to determine how siderophore-based cooperation affects plant-microbe interactions in the context of phytoremediation – the synergistic action between plants and microbes to clean up toxic mine waste.

(2) Bacterial interaction in natural communities

How microbes interact is fundamental to microbial community stability and function. The current consensus is that most microbial interactions in nature are competitive. However, this conclusion has largely arisen from studies measuring interactions between microbes that do not necessarily naturally interact with one another. Moreover, microbial interactions are typically measured under resource-rich artificial laboratory conditions over relatively short times scales. This project aims at determining how coevolutionary history and abiotic stress joinly influence the outcome of species interactions.

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Publications

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External Engagement and Impact

Associate Editor in Microbiology for Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological sciences.

Article and grant proposal reviewer for: American Journal of Botany, Annals of Botany, Biology Letters, Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering, Ecology, Ecology Letters, Evolution, FEMS Microbiology Ecology, International Microbiology, International Journal of Plant Sciences, ISME Journal, Journal of Animal Ecology, Journal of Applied Ecology, Journal of Ecology, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology, Oecologia, New Phytologist, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, PNAS, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Templeton Foundation.

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Teaching

I am interested in the evolution of species interactions, and have used various models systems (plants, bacteria, virusus) to answer both fundamental and applied questions in evolutionary ecology. I am currently working on public goods cooperation in bacterial communities, and how different social strategies affect the way bacteria interact with plants. I am currently supervising research projects related to this topic.

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Supervision / Group

Postdoctoral researchers

Research Technicians

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Office Hours:

Monday 1-5

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