Catherine (Trina) McMahon
Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor
Freshwater lakes provide important ecosystem services, with their resident microbiomes playing a major role in many of these services. The North Temperate Lakes Microbial Observatory seeks to understand how freshwater microbial communities assemble, the underlying traits and lifestyles of their individual members, and interactions among their members. We also aim to develop predictive models that relate local environmental factors, interactions, and traits to individual species abundances. We use multi-omics methods combined with ecosystem science and classical environmental microbiology to probe questions about the basic principles governing freshwater lake microbiome behavior.
