Students: Jade Loizel (Flinders University)
Supervisor: Sophie Leterme (Flinders University)
Seagrass are flowering plants that live entirely in our oceans and estuaries. They provide critical foraging and nursery habitats for animals, help with nutrient cycling and act as physical anchors that protect the environments they occur in. And just like our guts, they have microbiomes – the community of microorganisms that live in and on them.
Seagrasses, mostly Ruppia species, have declined subsequentially in the Coorong, so we must protect what remains and attempt to restore it. Previous work has demonstrated (for parts of the microbiome) strong links between seagrasses and their microbiome and suggests microbiome may increase the ecological fitness of its seagrass host.
This project builds on our previous work, by including new data additional elements of the microbiome of Ruppia to provide a more comprehensive understanding of (a) the composition of the Ruppia microbiome in the Coorong and (b) the role and contribution of prokaryotes and eukaryotes to the microbiome. This new knowledge will help to provide a greater appreciation of the importance of the microbiomes and help to explore ways to restore in the Coorong.
