Last month I spent a few days at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at the University of California San Diego, as a visiting scientist to explore new avenues for research collaborations with my colleague Prof Jack Gilbert and other resident faculty at the institute.

It was a great visit packed with very fruitful scientific discussions, participation in research seminars, workshops and other activities, as well as meeting many interesting people. Not only was I able to develop potential new ideas for collaborations but I also attended interesting seminars such as a couple by Stefano Allesina, a theoretical ecologists whose work I have followed for the past decade, on the complexity and stability of complex ecosystems.

Moving from the theoretical realm I found out about the research being carried out in Dr Sara Jackrel’s lab, where she is investigating the temporal dynamics of assembly of microbial communities in the pycosphere (the microscale region surrounding phytoplankton). Interesting discussions also arose with Prof Karsten Zengler on how we could incorporate sophisticated models of metabolic networks into theoretical community ecology for a better understanding of the microbiome.

During my stay at Scripps I was also invited to participate in a new initiative for the conservation of microbes. The meeting brought together experts on many different microbial environments and ecosystems as well as conservation experts from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This was an amazing opportunity to establish connections with very interesting and knowledgeable people on both these fields.

Beyond microbial conservation, Jack and I also had the chance to discuss interesting avenues for collaboration looking at the use of theoretical models to understand the temporal assembly of the gut microbiome. As part of a new project they will be conducting at SIO, an unprecedented dataset on human microbiomes followed at a very fine resolution for relatively long temporal scales will enable this understanding. We are very much looking forward to seeing how this research progresses.

Interesting synergies also arose with Dr Andrew Barton, Dr Vitul Agarwal and Dr Ewa Merz. They are studying the long-term temporal dynamics of free-living microbial communities in the ocean along the coast of California. They use a unique dataset to answer interesting questions about the temporal changes observed in marine microbial assemblages, their causes and consequences. We spent some time drawing equations on the board and thinking about how to tackle these questions from the theoretical ecology perspective.

As part of the rich set of activities I took part during my stay there I was also able to attend the PhD viva of Dr Sho Kodera. Sho is now a postdoctoral research at Gilbert’s lab and we had been in touch a few years back to discuss how theoretical models of community ecology could be put to practice to answer questions about the microbiome. This new opportunity for interaction re-sparked those old discussions and we ended up having a nice chat about potential ways in which we can mix theory and experiments of microbial assembly in the future.

 

With Dr Tammy Russell, we explored ideas on how to use tracking of marine birds to better understand their foraging behaviour and how this will be affected by future anthropogenic change. Our shared interest in marine birds alongside the computational tools we are currently developing at the Computational Ecology Lab to tackle issues like this created interesting synergies that we are keen to explore in the future.

All in all, a great research visit, full of interesting stories, research and friends!

None of this would have been possible without the support of the Taith International Exchange Programme and the Leverhulme Trust.

A huge thanks to Jack and his lab for the hospitality.