Micro- to Macro-system Integration Thomas J. DeWitt Wildlife & Fisheries Sciences, Plant Pathology & Microbiology Micro- to Macro-system Integration …through disciplinary and analytical innovation and synthesis . Watershed entries into Gulf http://www.gulfbase.org/ Projected Δ°C http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/ A B F C Atrazine (lb/mi²) E D Soil As (μg·soil L-1) What happens once we have ALL the data? Hosts (varied species): population genomics (FIS , FIT) phylogenomics genetic integrity toxins (metals, organics) morphology developmental instability Symbiont metagenomics (micro/macrosymbiome; pathogen:mutualist) Sediment metagenomics (micro/macrobiota) Plankton metagenomics (micro/macrobiota Community ecology (e.g. fish; aquatic plants) Environmental biology (limnology, nutrients, etc.) Sediment toxicology Humans: land use (indices of urbanization, industry, agriculture, etc.) groundwater chem demography population density health occupations Our Gulf of Mexico watersheds Collaborators   Michael P. Bishop Geography, TAMU Computer Science & Engineering, TAMU Thomas R. Ioerger Charles D. Johnson Bioinformatics and Genomics, TAMU Kelly K. Rose, Jennifer R. Bauer National Energy Technologies Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy Shannon B. Martin National Marine Fisheries Service, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration Cecilia A. Smith GIS & Maps Services, TAMU Et al… The problem isn’t getting data… it’s what to do with it We combine math, statistics, computer science, and geospatial analysis in a machine-learning crucible to make practical resource decisions G Coal ash sites Coal ash sites profile of the gene pools of the focal taxa and the evolutionary diversity of the microbiota and symbiota across the study area (on the specimens and in the environment), the ideal collecting strategy would be to sample all sites simultaneously or on the same 1-2 day span in the same year. Would this be possible? Could we coordinate and synchronize the fieldwork so that each of three teams would target their 12 reservoirs in a bio blitz over 2 days? That would be really awesome...   Which questions are we trying to address that would be most sensitive to temporal sampling strategy, especially sampling at different times of year or over multiple years be a problem? Are there questions we will try to address that will require serial sampling?  2 Relating the genomics / phylogeography work to ecosystem function or prediction of future responses to Anthropocene is a key challenge that basically no one has really outlined very well as far as I see from briefly looking at the literature. We haven't done as well with this as we could and I wish I could help mesh these two together more, but we have a limited timeframe. However, I have proposed some specific genetic / phylogeographic predictions. If we could work these in while linking these to ecosystem-level phenomena that would be awesome.