I am a PhD candidate majoring in soil ecology from College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University (NJAU), China, I got my bachelor degree in Biology from the College of Life Science, NJAU, in June 2012, and came to the College of Resources and Environmental Sciences taking a successive postgraduate and doctoral program of study for doctoral degree since then. Now I am a visiting student in AG Scheu sponsored by China Scholarship Council from Nov.2016 to Oct.2017.
My main research focuses on microbial ecology, now I got my interests in the relationship between soil fauna and soil microorganisms, especially microbe-host interactions, I am also interested in molecular techniques to solve ecological questions in a more efficient way, likewise including related bioinformatics.
One of my ongoing research topics is about the effects of earthworms on the soil microbiome. Based on the numerous reports that earthworms can modify soil structure and microbial communities as well as organic matter mineralization, we hypothesized that earthworms will increase soil aggregate stability, affect soil carbon and nitrogen transformation processes, and thus modify soil microbial community structure. Therefore, soil samples from a 15-year-old agricultural field including earthworm manipulations and organic amendments were collected. In the laboratory, different size of water-stable aggregates were separated based on wet-sieving method. Then, the overall diversity and composition of fugal and bacterial community in bulk soil and different aggregates were analyzed by PCR-based molecular techniques. The work was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Feng Hu and Prof. Manqiang Liu.
Another research question we considered is that whether (biotic) food resources of soil decomposers are constant between species belong to different trophic levels. To this end, we will apply high-throughput sequencing method to study the gut mcirobiome of two kinds of oribatid mites, primary decomposers and secondary decomposers. The work is being conducted under the supervision of Prof. Stefan Scheu.