1. 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
Projected Δ°C 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.