Alessia Bani

University of Derby

We investigated the changes in microbial community diversities and functions in natural downed wood at different decay stages in a natural oak forest in the Italian Alps, through metagenomics analysis and in vitro analysis. Alfa diversity of bacterial communities was affected by the decay stage and log characteristics, while beta diversity was main...

Freshwaters are critical to human survival and well-being. However, over-reliance on freshwaters has made them among the most threatened ecosystems in the world. Freshwaters also connect terrestrial and marine ecosystems, making them a melting pot for anthropogenic stressors, in-particular agricultural and urban runoff containing chemical and nutri...

Wallacea—the meeting point between the Asian and Australian fauna—is one of the world's largest centers of endemism. Twenty-three million years of complex geological history have given rise to a living laboratory for the study of evolution and biodiversity, highly vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures. In the present article, we review the historic...

Centrate is a low-cost alternative to synthetic fertilizers for microalgal cultivation, reducing environmental burdens and remediation costs. Adapted microalgae need to be selected and characterised to maximise biomass production and depuration efficiency. Here, the performance and composition of six microalgal communities cultivated both on synthe...

Many rural smallholder farmers in Kenya use water-harvesting ponds, to collect rainwater, as sustainable sources of water for domestic and agricultural purposes. There is currently limited information regarding the microbial ecology in these ponds. Here, we used High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) to characterize the microorganisms present (including...

This paper demonstrated the growth ability of twelve algae-microbial consortia (AC) isolated from organic wastes when a pig slurry-derived wastewater (NFP) was used as growth substrate in autotrophic cultivation. Nutrient recovery, biochemical composition, fatty acid and amino acid profiles of algae consortia were evaluated and compared. Three alga...

Scientists and practitioners working on river restoration have made progress on understanding the recovery potential of rivers from geomorphological and engineering perspectives. We now need to build on this work to gain a better understanding of the biological processes involved in river restoration. Environmental policy agendas are focusing on na...

Pure microalgae cultivation in organic wastes may be hampered by their low adaptation to extreme growth conditions and by the risk of microbial contamination. This work aimed to isolate self-adapted microalgae-microbial consortia able to survive in organic wastes characterized by extreme conditions, to be then proposed for technological application...

The amount of nitrogen (N) deposition onto forests has globally increased and is expected to double by 2050, mostly because of fertilizer production and fossil fuel burning. Several studies have already investigated the effects of N depositions in forest soils, highlighting negative consequences on plant biodiversity and the associated biota. Never...

In previous studies eDNA metabarcoding has been demonstrated as a viable tool for catchment-level biodiversity sampling in rivers (Deiner et al. 2016). However, questions still remain over the appropriate sampling protocol for large spatial scale sampling. River reaches are composed of multiple habitats with species composition varying from one to...

Cultivation of specific microalgae is still difficult in an industrial setup as contamination and balancing the economic cost are not always possible. Understanding the ecology of cultivation of microalgae is therefore necessary to implement stable production. The aim of the study was to understand how different types of photobioreactors and types...

This study aimed at examining and comparing the nutrient removal efficiency, biomass productivity and microbial community structure of two outdoor pilot-scale photobioreactors, namely a bubble column and a raceway pond, treating the liquid fraction of an agricultural digestate. Bacterial and eukaryotic communities were characterized using a metabar...

Supraglacial debris of Miage Glacier (Mont Blanc, Italy) was used as an in situ model for monitoring growth and modification of the taxonomic structure of fungal populations using an in-growth mesh bag approach over three consecutive years. Sterilized debris was placed in mesh bags (MB) and buried in the debris layer. Pristine debris (D) covering t...

Marine management areas provide a key tool for efforts towards sustainable development, reconciling socio-economic goals with those for biodiversity conservation. Decisions about where and when to establish spatial management areas in the oceans are currently hampered by the uncertainties of incomplete, or overly general, information about biodiver...

Microbes drive leaf litter decomposition, and their communities are adapted to the local vegetation providing that litter. However, whether these local microbial communities confer a significant home-field advantage in litter decomposition remains unclear, with contrasting results being published. Here, we focus on a litter transplantation experime...

Background Microalgae‐bacteria based processes are among the most promising low‐cost technologies to treat livestock wastewaters. The current literature reports the need for pretreatment or dilution of piggery wastewater for adequate microalgal growth. The aim of the study is to optimize the potential of microalgal‐bacterial communities to treat un...

Litter decomposition is the main source of mineral nitrogen (N) in terrestrial ecosystem and a key step in carbon (C) cycle. Microbial community is the main decomposer, and its specialization on specific litter is considered at the basis of higher decomposition rate in its natural environment than in other forests. However, there are contrasting ev...

We studied the relationship between plant functional foliar traits and the endophytic bacterial communities associated in trees, taking the example of sessile oak ( Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl). Forty-five samples with replicates of eight leaves per sample were collected in spring, summer and autumn. Bacterial community diversity was analyzed via...

Leaf litter and deadwood have important roles in the forest ecosystems, providing shelter for several organisms, preventing erosion and microclimate fluctuations. Their decomposition is a key process of biogeochemical cycles in forest. Microorganisms are the primary agents of decomposition. Particularly, fungi are considered the major contributors...

Wood-inhabiting fungi are major decomposers of organic matter in forest systems, playing a crucial role for the maintenance of critical ecosystem processes. Despite their importance, very few studies have investigated wood-inhabiting fungi with biomolecular techniques, especially in Southern Europe. We studied deadwood quality along with stand stru...

Purpose Spatial distribution on a regional scale of the rhizobacterial communities of Phragmites australis stands was investigated along the Yellow River watershed, China. Materials and methods Samples were collected along a secondary and the main drainage canals. Amplified ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (ARISA) and pyrosequencing were perfor...

Reconstruction of the regulatory network is an important step in understanding how organisms control the expression of gene products and therefore phenotypes. Recent studies have pointed out the importance of regulatory network plasticity in bacterial adaptation and evolution. The evolution of such networks within and outside the species boundary i...

Here we report a benchmark of the effect of bootstrap cut-off values of the RDP Classifier tool in terms of data retention along the different taxonomic ranks by using Illumina reads. Results provide guidelines for planning sequencing depths and selection of bootstrap cut-off in taxonomic assignments.

We performed a longitudinal study (repeated observations of the same sample over time) to investigate both the composition and structure of temporal changes of bacterial community composition in soil mesocosms, subjected to three different treatments (water and 5 or 25 mg kg(-1) of dried soil Cd(2+)). By analogy with the pan genome concept, we iden...