Freshwater Colloquium – Currents of Life: How Flow Shapes Complex Microbial Communities

Join the School of Freshwater Sciences for a Colloquium with guest speaker: Dr. Emmi Mueller

Much of life on Earth is at the mercy of currents and flow, which determine the organisms and resources present in an environment. In aquatic ecosystems, these currents shape the ecological and evolutionary trajectories of the diverse microbial communities that inhabit them. In this presentation, I will discuss how microbial communities in both natural and man-made water systems are shaped by physical flow, specifically variation in residence time, or the time organisms and resources spend in a system. I will also discuss how these systems are shaped by the flow of energy, such as through variation in metabolic activity and functions like antibiotic resistance, focusing on how this knowledge may shape management of these systems from an ecosystem and human health perspective.

Dr. Emmi Mueller is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Newton Lab in the School of Freshwater Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. in Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior from Indiana University, where her doctoral research focused on the importance of residence time and metabolic heterogeneity in structuring lake microbial communities. Her current role in the Newton Lab focuses primarily on understanding changes in antimicrobial resistance gene variants over time in wastewater and natural water systems.

This presentation is open to students, faculty, staff, alumni and the public.