Assistant Professor Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan
Decomposition is a large component of nutrient and organic matter cycling in ecosystems, forming the base of food webs. Understanding the species and process of decomposition can provide mechanistic understanding and novel insight into how detrital community ecology influences ecosystem processes. Microbial communities are ubiquitous in the biosphere, including extreme environments, and they play a dominant, but often understudied, role in decomposition ecology. Carrion microbiomes play a critical role in the decomposition of carrion which contributes to energy and nutrient transformation in every ecosystem; however, little is known about the structure and composition of the microbial communities associated across habitats, when insects are present, or if they follow a similar pattern of succession during decomposition (regardless of their habit). This presentation will offer an overview of the community composition dynamics of postmortem insect colonizers and their related microbes. Relatively, few studies have addressed the microbial ecology of postmortem insect interactions with carrion, and understanding these interactions is crucially becoming recognized as potentially important for decomposition ecology and applications, such as forensic entomology.
