MSc. Caio César Pires de Paula, Ph.D.
Research Assistant
Department of Aquatic Microbial Ecology (AME)
Institute of Hydrobiology
+420 387 77 5872
caio.piresdepaula@hbu.cas.cz
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I work in the field of microbial ecology since 2008. During this time, I conducted research focused on bacterial and fungal communities in tropical caves hosted on several substrates (water, soil, and sediment). Currently, at the Department of Aquatic Microbial Ecology, I develop projects related to microbial ecology in different environments, including fishponds, caves and phyllosphere.The fishpond project focuses on microbial trophic interactions in shallow hypertrophic waterbodies ecosystems, which represent one of the most underexplored aquatic ecosystems world-wide. We are trying to solve the microbial food web involving micro invertebrates and methanotrophs bacteria. After that, we could point out the main drivers in the methane cycle on that shallow lakes and how we can manage the methane cycle in this system to avoid high impact on the environment.
The cave project is about the structure on microbial communities in subterranean environments and to explore functional diversity in that habitats. Microbial networks and the metabolism of that microbiome are the main interest of the cave projects now. Based on that results we can find some new answers about the biogeochemical cycles, such as CO2 fixation pathway.
Finally, the phylosphere project aims to assess the microbial diversity into the plant leaves and seeking for the interaction plant-microbiome and the diverse interactomes. Now a days, we have a culture collection of microrganisms, including bacteria and fungi strains. The next step should be screening the strains looking for some bioactive products useful for biotechnological field, such as antibiotics, growth promotion compounds or cytotoxic activity.
