Dr Robert Griffiths

Molecular Microbial Ecologist

Research interests

My main interest lies in the exploration of microbial diversity in natural environments, with a particular emphasis on bacterial communities in soil ecosystems.

Despite the immense global importance of microbes, our knowledge of their ecology is limited due to their small size and the difficulties in both differentiating them and working out the processes they carry out. My research therefore extends from the development of methods for studying microbes, to ecological applications in exploring biodiversity patterns in both simple and complex natural ecosystems.

Key questions I’m interested in relate to the quantification of drivers of microbial biodiversity, and also determining how changes in biodiversity relate to changes in ecosystem functioning.

Research career

My scientific career began in 2000 when I did my PhD and first post-doc working on the NERC Soil Biodiversity Programme.

I am currently involved in an EU (FP7) project which aims to increase the understanding of the role of soil biodiversity in ecosystem functioning (ECOFINDERS - “Ecological Function and Biodiversity Indicators in European Soils”, ENV.2010.2.1.4-4 ).

Prior to this I led two projects examining taxonomic and functional diversity in GB soils collected as part of the UK Countryside Survey. These were funded through a NERC standard grant (NE/E006353/1) and the CEH EHFI programme. Additionally as part of this work, I was also involved in a DEFRA project examining whether soil classifications are relevant to soil function and diversity (SP1602).

Selected publications

See also the NERC Open Research Archive.

Griffiths, R.I., Thomson, B. C., James, P., Bell, T., Bailey, M.J., and Whiteley, A S. (2011) The Bacterial Biogeography of British Soils. Environmental Microbiology (In press)

Thomson, B.C., Ostle, N., McNamara, N., Bailey, M.J., Whiteley, A.S., and Griffiths, R.I. (2010) Vegetation Affects the Relative Abundances of Dominant Soil Bacterial Taxa and Soil Respiration Rates in an Upland Grassland Soil. Microbial Ecology 59: 335-343.

Bell, T., Bonsall, M.B., Buckling, A., Whiteley, A.S., Goodall, T., and Griffiths, R.I. (2010) Protists have divergent effects on bacterial diversity along a productivity gradient. Biology Letters 6: 639-642.

Vos, M., Birkett, P.J., Birch, E., Griffiths, R.I., and Buckling, A. (2009) Local Adaptation of Bacteriophages to Their Bacterial Hosts in Soil. Science 325: 833-833.

Huang, W.E., Stoecker, K., Griffiths, R., Newbold, L., Daims, H., Whiteley, A.S., and Wagner, M. (2007) Raman-FISH: combining stable-isotope Raman spectroscopy and fluorescence in situ hybridization for the single cell analysis of identity and function. Environmental Microbiology 9: 1878-1889.

Griffiths RI, Bailey MJ, McNamara NP, and Whiteley,A.S. (2006). The functions and components of the Sourhope soil microbiota. Applied Soil Ecology, 33 (2): 114-126

Manefield, M., Whiteley, A. S., Griffiths, R. I., and Bailey, M. J. (2002). RNA stable isotope probing, a novel means of linking microbial community function to Phylogeny. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 68: 5367-5373.

Griffiths, R. I., Whiteley, A. S., O'Donnell, A. G., and Bailey, M. J. (2000). Rapid method for coextraction of DNA and RNA from natural environments for analysis of ribosomal DNA and rRNA based microbial community composition. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 66: 5488-5491.