Sending a big congratulations to C-MĀIKI faculty member Joanne Yew for her promotion to Full Researcher! https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2025/06/10/uh-2025-tenure-and-promotion-list/

C-MĀIKI faculty member Alex Culley has been featured in a Science article for the discovery of a novel dinoflagellate giant virus (PelV-1). This virus has the longest virus appendage described to date! Read the article here: https://www.science.org/content/article/giant-virus-record-long-tail-discovered-pacific-ocean Read the bioRxiv preprint here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.19.665647v1.full

C-MĀIKI faculty members Daisuke Takagi and Nhu Nguyen have been featured in the UH News for their study on bacterial dispersal and nutrient transport along fungal highways! They received a 3-year NIH/NSF grant to explore these microbial interactions, which combine mathematic modeling with biological research. https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2025/09/10/how-do-bacteria-travel-on-fungal-freeways/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=UH+News+091725 Video showing bacteria spreading along a larger fungal network

The #mahimicrobe competition is back! Awards of up to $10,000 will support innovative, microbiome-focused projects that address pressing Hawaiʻi-based problems through research, science communication, and transdisciplinary collaboration. This competition is open to all UH Mānoa graduate students (MS/PhD) and postdoctoral trainees. Visit the #mahimicrobe2025 page for more information. https://www.c-maiki.org/mahimicrobe2025

UH Foundation has featured the research of four C-MAIKI faculty in a recent article! Coral reef resilience on Maui - Craig Nelson Infectious disease control with sterile mosquitoes - Matthew Medeiros Biodiversity conservation with indigenous pomace flies - Joanne Yew and Nicole Hynson See Q&A responses and read more about their research in the UH Foundation feature: https://www.uhfoundation.org/impact/research/reefs-rainforests-and-resistance-c-maikis-microbial-mission

The species area relationship is a classic ecological law describing the relationship between habitat increase and the number of species. Species area relationships are resoundingly positive across macrobes such as plants and animals, and emerge through non-exclusive stochastic and deterministic processes including changes in immigration and extinction, drift, and environmental heterogeneity. Due to unique attributes of the microbial lifestyle, they may not abide by similar rules as macrobes, especially when it comes to spatial scaling. We predict that host-associated microbiomes will exhibit shallower species area relationships than free-living microbiomes due to strong host filtering, and that the species area relationships of bacteria will be shallower than fungi due primarily to differences in dispersal ability. We test these predictions in a relatively simple field system where bromeliad phytotelmata comprise aquatic ecosystems that support invertebrates and environmental substrates such as detritus. Larger phytotelmata generate larger habitat islands for microbiomes allowing us to explicitly examine their species area relationships. We find that the species area relationships of free-living and host-associated microbiomes differ, as do those of microbiome members. By assessing the relationship between environmental conditions and richness, and measuring diversity across scales, we posit that these observed differences in species area relationships are owed to differences in realized niches and dispersal abilities among microbes. These findings highlight that the classic laws of biological spatial scaling do not necessarily accurately represent microbiomes, and that the influence of area on diversity appears to be more important for some microbiomes and microbes than others. Click here to read more

Food webs govern interactions among organisms, and drive energy fluxes within ecosystems. With an increasing appreciation for the role of symbiotic microbes in host metabolism and development, it is imperative to understand the extent to which microbes conform to, and potentially influence, canonical food web efficiencies and structures. Here, we investigate whether bacteria and their taxa and functional genes are compositionally nested within a simple model food web hierarchy, and the extent to which this is predicted by the trophic position of the host. Using shotgun and amplicon sequencing of discrete food web compartments within replicate tank bromeliads, we find that both taxonomy and function are compositionally nested and largely mirror the pyramid-shaped distribution of food webs. Further, nearly the entirety of bacterial taxa and functional genes associated with hosts are contained within host-independent environmental samples. Community composition of bacterial taxa did not significantly correlate with that of functional genes, indicating a high likelihood of functional redundancy. Whereas bacterial taxa were shaped by both location and trophic position of their host, functional genes were not spatially structured. Our work illustrates the advantages of applying food web ecology to predict patterns of overlapping microbiome composition among unrelated hosts and distinct habitats. Because bacterial symbionts are critical components of host metabolic potential, this result raises important questions about whether bacterial consortia are shaped by the same energetic constraints as hosts, and whether they play an active role in food web efficiency. Click here to read more

C-MĀIKI Researcher Alex Culley has been featured in a Télé-Québec Documentary (Climat déréglé, santé en danger) exploring the threat of climate change on ecosystems and human health. Dr. Culley describes the possible threat of microbes that are being released due to thawing permafrost.

We would like to welcome our newest faculty members to the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa! We are excited to have Drs. Matthew Knope, Maggie Yuan, and Lenore Pipes join our C-MĀIKI Faculty. Please visit their profiles to learn more about their research interests! Profile links: Matthew Knope Maggie Yuan Lenore Pipes

From June 25-26, 2019 Co-Director of C-MĀIKI Dr. Nicole Hynson attended the National Microbiome Centers Meeting at the Beckman Center, UC Irvine where workshops were held to discuss how we might coordinate our efforts across Microbiome Centers to move the field of microbiome science forward. Pictured here with Nicole is meeting organizer Dr. Jennifer Martiny (UC Irvine) and attendee Dr. Britt Koskella (UC Berkeley).

TheC-MĀIKI#mahimicrobe2018 competition provided opportunities for UH Mānoa graduate students (PhD or MS) to compete for seed funding (up to $5,000) to cultivate, expand and strengthen the incorporation of microbial research into their dissertation or thesis work; and to develop their scientific communication and marketing skills through the promotion and pitch of their research. We encouraged graduate students from any discipline to submit projects that highlight microbes at the foundation of a biological or physical process. The goal of this fellowship competition was to increase scientific literacy in microbiome research and foster trans-disciplinary research collaborations with microbes at the core. Congratulations to the #Mahimicrobe2018 Award Recipients $5,000 - Randi Rollins (PI: Rob Cowie) Project Title:   I can’t live without you: rat lungworm and microbes  Summary: This project will identify the microbial communities present in  Angiostrongylus cantonensis (rat lungworm) and its obligate hosts (rats and snails) at different stages of the parasite’s life cycle. $5,000 - Shayle Matsuda (PI: Judy Lemus) Project Title: Does structureshape the microbial landscape? Examining intra-colonial variability in microbial (Symbiodinaceae spp. and bacteria) communities in a Hawaiian coral (Montipora capitata) Summary: The project will assess spatial microbial patterning – diversity and composition – within and across individual coral colonies and identify the mechanisms which make corals more susceptible to stress.  $3,500 - Wesley Sparagon (PI: Craig Nelson) Project Title: Synergistic impacts of algal DOM and temperature on coral reef bacteria Summary : This project investigates how coral reef-associated bacteria respond to the combination of thermal stress and algal competition using high-throughput DNA and RNA sequencing. Findings from this study will help us better understand how microbial communities affect the fitness of coral reefs during periods of stress. $3,500 - Solange Saxby (PI: Yong Li) Project Title: Kalo; a functional prebiotic food Summary: Kalo is a nutrient dense food high in vitamins, minerals, and dietary fiber and it has the potential to be a prebiotic food and to improve gut health. This research project will investigate Kalo'spotentialas a functional prebiotic food by stimulating human digestion and fecal fermentation. $2,000 - Sarah Tucker (PI: Mike Rappe) Project Title: Examining the metabolic activities of abundant marine microbes at the population-level Summary: This research project seeks to define the metabolisms of the most abundant marine microbesat the ecologically-relevant scale of populations and will examine the metabolisms of abundant marine microbesat the surface of nearshore, coastal, and oceanic environments of Kāne‘oheBay, Hawai‘i using a genetic sequencing tool called metatranscriptomics. $2,000 – Sabrina Diemert (PI: Tao Yan) Project Title: Iron-reducingbacteria community changes and metagenomics under different water conditions (drinking water vs. wastewater) Summary: This project aims to investigate how iron-reducing bacteria (IRBs) behave in communities and how they change in different environments by growing IRB microcosms. Bacterial community DNA will be analyzedvia 16S amplicon sequencing and metagenomics techniques. The funding from #mahimicrobe2018 will be used to support the cost of training on the Nanopore MinION DNA sequencer with aims to apply this new sequencing technique inthe present study.   $2,000 - Maria Costantini (PI: Floyd Reed) Project Title: Examining the role of symbiotic microbes in preventing the extinction of a critically endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper Summary: This project seeks to determine the effect of captivity on the endangered Hawaiian honeycreeper ‘Akikiki gut microbiome and to develop better captive breeding practices.  $1,000 - Andrian Gajigan(PI: Grieg Steward) Title: Outsmarting the host: Exploring the role of giant virus-encoded microRNAs in regulating host machinery Summary: This study will utilize a giantvirus-phytoplankton model system isolated from Hawaiʻi waters to investigate the molecular mechanism of infection. Small RNA and transcriptome sequencing will be performed to facilitate the discovery of novel and evolutionary conserved microRNAs, and to gain insights into the expression patterns of microRNA gene targets, respectively.  $1,000 - Alexandra Paer(PI: Qing Li) Title: Interactions between gastrointestinalmicrobiome and corn silk flavones in relevance to Alzheimer’s disease prevention and treatment Summary: This study will determine the effect of microbiomes on absorption and transportation of flavonoids (such as isoorientin and derivatives, which has been implicatedin Alzheimer’s) to the brain and will investigate microbiome metabolism of flavonoids, possibly to smaller molecules that may be more readily absorbed and transported. Mahalo nui to our amazing panel of judges Dr. Kiana Frank (Assistant Professor, PBRC), Dr. Tara Essock-Burns (Post-Doc, PBRC). Randall Scarborough (Lab Manager, PBRC), Dr. Chad Walton (Research Program Officer, Office of Vice Chancellor, and Donavan Kealoha (Director, Startup Capital Ventures). Mahalo nui to Dr. Matt Medeiros (Assistant Professor, PBRC) and Dr. Brad Jones (Director CNFS, PBRC) for their facilitation of the event.

NIH COBRE - $10+ million over 5 years for an “Integrative Center for Environmental Microbiomes and Human Health” with two new core facilities: an insectary and a molecular analysis laboratory.