David Richard ElliottUniversity of Derby · College of Science and Engineering
David Richard Elliott
BSc, PhD, Microbiology
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49
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
September 2019 - present
January 2016 - September 2019
January 2010 - present
Publications
Publications (49)
The Kalahari of southern Africa is characterised by sparse vegetation interspersed with microbe-dominated biological soil crusts (BSC) which deliver a range of ecosystem services including soil stabilisation and carbon fixation. We characterised the bacterial communities of BSCs (0–1 cm depth) and the subsurface soil (1–2 cm depth) in an area typic...
The UK hosts 15–19% of global upland ombrotrophic (rain fed) peatlands that are estimated to store 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon and represent a critical upland habitat with regard to biodiversity and ecosystem services provision. Net production is dependent on an imbalance between growth of peat-forming Sphagnum mosses and microbial decomposition b...
Bacteria were isolated from the dental plaques of nine dogs and a sample of pooled saliva from five other dogs and were then
identified by comparative 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Among 339 isolates, 84 different phylotypes belonging to 37 genera were
identified. Approximately half of the phylotypes were identified to the species level, and 28% of the...
Microbial adaptations for survival and dispersal may directly influence landscape stability and potential for dust emission in drylands where biological soil crusts (biocrusts) protect mineral soil surfaces from wind erosion. In the Lake Eyre basin of central Australia we operated a wind tunnel on sandy soils and collected the liberated material, w...
Polluted aquifers contain indigenous microbial communities with the potential for in situ bioremediation. However, the effect of hydrogeochemical gradients on in situ microbial communities (especially at the plume fringe, where natural attenuation is higher) is still not clear. In this study, we used culture-independent techniques to investigate th...
Biological soil crusts, or biocrusts, are microbial communities found in soil surfaces in drylands and in other locations where vascular plant cover is incomplete. They are functionally significant for numerous ecosystem services, most notably in the C fixation and storage due to the ubiquity of photosynthetic microbes. Whereas carbon fixation and...
The use of bacteria-based self-healing concrete for substructures in ground conditions is an area of increasing interest for enhancing the durability and longevity of infrastructure. In line with this objective, the present study investigates the bio-self-healing performance of a cementitious material embedded in clay soil with varying chemical exp...
In research on self-healing concrete, the restorative performance can be evaluated by a wide range of techniques. However, most of these techniques can be challenging to apply to concrete samples embedded in soil without causing a significant disturbance to the test (as they require removing the samples from the soil, washing off any residue, and e...
Passive acoustic monitoring has great potential as a cost-effective method for long-term
biodiversity monitoring. However, to maximise its efficacy, standardisation of survey protocols is
necessary to ensure data are comparable and permit reliable inferences.
The aim of these guidelines is to outline a basic long-term acoustic monitoring protocol t...
Globally, major efforts are being made to restore peatlands to maximise their resilience to anthropogenic climate change, which puts continuous pressure on peatland ecosystems and modifies the geography of the environmental envelope that underpins peatland functioning. A probable effect of climate change is reduction in the waterlogged conditions t...
Peatlands play an important role in global biogeochemical cycles and are essential for multiple ecosystem functions. Understanding the environmental drivers of microbial functioning and community structure can provide insights to enable effective and evidence‐based management. However, it remains largely unknown how microbial diversity contributes...
Soil biocrusts, formed from communities of microbes and their extracellular products are a common feature of dryland soil surfaces. Biocrust organisms are only intermittently metabolically active, but due to their ubiquity they make a significant contribution to the carbon cycle. Quantification of the controls and insights into the interlinked proc...
Shrub encroachment is occurring in many of the world's drylands, but its impacts on ecosystem structure and function are still poorly understood. In particular, it remains unclear how shrub encroachment affects dryland soil surfaces, including biological soil crust (biocrust) communities. In this study, soil surfaces (0–1 cm depth) were sampled fro...
Many of today’s environmental problems, as well as their potential solutions, are intimately interwoven with the microbial component of the global ecosystem. The recent developments of microbial bio self-healing concrete technology were undoubtedly promoted by societal interests in environmental quality. Three principal groups of parameters can inf...
The incubation conditions for concrete specimens are a significant factor in the mechanism of self-healing. This study aims to investigate the effect of the presence of microbial and organic materials within the soil on autogenous and bio self-healing. This was achieved by incubating cracked cement mortar specimens into fully saturated sterilized a...
Concrete is a popular construction material as it is relatively cheap and resists well on compression but it has weakness under tension loads. Therefore, it is reinforced on tension by steel bars. However, steel bars can be corroded under environmental and chemical exposure due to cracks opening of concrete. The structural investigation and repairi...
The basal zone of glaciers is characterized by physicochemical properties that are distinct from firnified ice due to strong interactions with underlying substrate and bedrock. Basal ice (BI) ecology and the roles that the microbiota play in biogeochemical cycling, weathering, and proglacial soil formation remain poorly described. We report on basa...
Methane (CH4) emissions from northern peatlands are projected to increase due to climate change, primarily because of projected increases in soil temperature. Yet, the rates and temperature responses of the two CH4 emission‐related microbial processes (CH4 production by methanogens and oxidation by methanotrophs) are poorly known. Further, peatland...
The efficiency of bio self-healing of pre-cracked mortar specimens incubated in sand was investigated. The investigation examined the effect of soil pH representing industrially recognised classes of exposure, ranging from no risk of chemical attack (neutral pH & 7) to very high risk (pH & 4.5). Simultaneously, the soil was subjected to fully and p...
The basal zone of glaciers is characterised by physicochemical properties that are distinct from firnified ice because of strong interactions with underlying substrate. Basal ice ecology and the roles that the microbiota play in biogeochemical cycling, weathering, and proglacial soil formation, remains poorly known. We report bacterial diversity an...
Peatlands are wetland ecosystems with great significance as natural habitats and as major global carbon stores. They have been subject to widespread exploitation and degradation with resulting losses in characteristic biota and ecosystem functions such as climate regulation. More recently, large-scale programmes have been established to restore pea...
A participatory monitoring programme of an exceptional modification of urban soundscapes during Covid-19 containment.
Successful implementation of bacteria-based self-healing in cracked cementitious materials requires the provision of a suitable incubation environment, which can activate the bacteria to produce e.g. calcium carbonate sealing the cracks. Research to date has focused on the self-healing process in humid air and water. However, almost all structures...
Background:
Coral reefs face unprecedented declines in diversity and cover, a development largely attributed to climate change-induced bleaching and subsequent disease outbreaks. Coral-associated microbiomes may strongly influence the fitness of their hosts and alter heat tolerance and disease susceptibility of coral colonies. Here, we describe a...
The provision of suitable incubation environments is vital for successful implementation of bio self-healing concrete (bio-concrete). We investigated the effect of soil incubation to examine if the self-healing process can be activated in comparison with the conventional incubation environment (water). The data was collected from laboratory-scale e...
Shrub encroachment is a well-documented phenomenon affecting many of the world's drylands. The alteration of vegetation structure and species composition can lead to changes in local microclimate and soil properties which in turn affect carbon cycling. The objectives of this paper were to quantify differences in air temperatures, soil carbon, nitro...
The emergence of high-throughput DNA sequencing methods provides unprecedented opportunities to further unravel bacterial biodiversity and its worldwide role from human health to ecosystem functioning. However, despite the abundance of sequencing studies, combining data from multiple individual studies to address macroecological questions of bacter...
Invertebrates account for more than 89% of all extant organisms in the marine environment, represented by over 174,600 species (recorded to date). Such diversity is mirrored in (or more likely increased by) the microbial symbionts associated with this group and in the marine natural products (or MNPs) that they produce. Since the early 1950s over 2...
Basal ice is a significant sub-glacial component of glaciers and ice sheets that arises from ice-bedrock/substrate interaction. As a result, basal ice of a glacier retains a distinctive physical and chemical signature characterised by a high sediment-and low bubble-content and selective ionic enrichment. Previous research concluded that sediment en...
We present the first assessment of microbial cell discharge from sediment-laden glacier basal ice. At Svínafellsjökull, a temperate valley glacier in Iceland, approximately 10^17 cells a−1 are transferred through basal ice to the proglacial environment, and between 10^1 and 10^6 cells g−1 basal ice were cultured from our samples under laboratory co...
Aims We aimed to characterise the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal (AMF) community structure and potential edaphic determinants in the dominating, but poorly described, root-colonizing Paris-type AMF community on co-occurring Amazonian leguminous trees.
Methods Three highly productive leguminous trees (Dicorynia guianensis, Eperua falcata and Tachiga...
Sub-glacial microbes are receiving increased attention due to their central roles in storage and release of greenhouse gases, such as methane and CO 2. Climate change driven warming and resulting glacier retreat exposes bedrock that can contribute to soil formation in which subglacial-released microorganisms may play a crucial role. Basal ice, whic...
Due to the climate of Finland, it has been suggested that the ecosystems located in Finland are especially sensitive to warming. Therefore, we compared 13 peatland systems throughout Finland along a latitudinal gradient from 69°N to 61°N to examine the response of methane production and methane oxidation with warming climate. Methane production occ...
Determination of the physical, chemical and biological properties of glacier ice is essential for many aspects of glaciology and glacial geomorphology. In this chapter, we draw principally on examples of the description and sampling of the basal zone of glaciers where the ice is in direct contact with its substrate, and hence is where a great deal...
Land use change in the rangelands of Botswana is affecting soil properties. Pastoralism is the only viable livelihood for many rural poor in Botswana, and privatization of communal land is reducing the area of grazing available to those without land tenure. This has elevated stocking densities in communal areas, increasing pressure on soils and veg...
La fragmentación es una alteración profunda del ecosistema que limita la capacidad de dispersión y colonización de muchas especies afectando su vulnerabilidad a otros cambios ambientales. Se estudió el efecto del tamaño de fragmento sobre las interacciones suelo-planta y planta-microorganismo y su respuesta a sequía, como escenario de cambio global...
In this study, a novel technology was developed to achieve efficient partial nitrification at moderately
low temperature, which would save the aeration cost and have the capacity to treat a wide range of
ammonium-rich wastewaters with low chemical oxygen demand-to-nitrogen (COD:N) ratios. At pH of
7.1–7.4 and a sludge retention time (SRT) of greate...
Contamination of aquifers by organic pollutants threatens groundwater supplies and the environment. In situ biodegradation of organic pollutants by microbial communities is important for the remediation of contaminated sites, but our understanding of the relationship between microbial development and pollutant biodegradation is poor. A particular c...
The attachment of microbial cells to solid substrata is a primary ecological strategy for the survival of species and the development of specific activity and function within communities. An hypothesis arising from a biological sciences perspective may be stated as follows:
The attachment of microbes to interfaces is controlled by the macromolecula...
Biofilms are difficult to quantify especially when microscopic observations are impractical. However it is important to quantify attached cell numbers to complement planktonic cell counts in order to achieve a holistic understanding of microbial processes. Traditional counting methods, including microscopic techniques and serial dilution plating, g...
Interbacterial adhesion of bacteria isolated from canine dental plaque was assessed by performing a visual coaggregation assay.
Using conditions mimicking those likely to be encountered in vivo, the entire cultivable plaque microbiota from a single dog
was assessed, and eight (6.7%) unique coaggregation interactions were detected for 120 crosses. T...
Glass plates are frequently used as the substratum in flow cell experiments to allow continuous non-destructive observations of biofilm development via microscopy. The aim of this study was to evaluate hydroxyapatite-coated glass as a substratum for flow cell experiments, in comparison to plain glass, for modelling primary colonization of the tooth...
The prevalence of Csh-like fibrillar surface proteins among oral streptococci was investigated by ELISA and by immunoelectron microscopy using antiserum raised to recombinant fragments of CshA of Streptococcus gordonii DL1. The majority of S. gordonii, Streptococcus sanguis and Streptococcus oralis strains tested elaborated short (ca. 50-80 nm long...