Catalina Cuellar-Gempeler (1984-) is a Colombian microbial ecologist and marine microbiologist, currently an associate professor at Cal Poly Humboldt.[1][2] Her research focuses on understanding microbial metacommunity dynamics, eco-evolutionary dynamics, and ecosystem dynamics. Her research group, the CGlab uses host associated microbial communities as a model system to understand how processes of community assembly result in patterns of diversity and function. The lab's main emphasis is on the microbes used in digestion in the Californian and Eastern carnivorous pitcher plants.[3] In March 2021, Cuellar-Gempeler was awarded an Early Career grant of $1 million by the National Science Foundation.[4][5]
Cuellar-Gempeler was born on August 25, 1984, in Bogotá, Colombia.[2] She is the oldest of three children. Her father Carlos Cuellar Cubides is a Colombian gastroenterologist in Bogotá, while her mother, Emilia Gempeler, of Swiss descent, is a senior occupational health nurse.[6] As a young child and teenager, Cuellar-Gempeler attended Helvetia school, a private multilingual (Spanish, German, French) Swiss school located in Suba, Bogotá, Colombia. As a child, she marveled at the diversity and beauty of the colombian country side, spending weekends and school breaks in Sasaima (Cundinamarca) with her maternal grandparents. Soon after her high school graduation, Cuellar-Gempeler started her studies at University of the Andes in Bogotá, graduating with both a B.Sc. in biology and a B.Sc. in microbiology in 2008. During her studies, Cuellar-Gempeler was an outstanding student, who thrived in all subjects ranging from cellular biology to chemistry and physics.[citation needed] Cuellar-Gempeler showed an interest in microbes early on while on a field trip to Sierra Nevada del Cocuy in Colombia. When she was back home from this field trip she couldn’t stop thinking about the microbes living around her, who have much shorter lifespans than humans.[7] She attended graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin where she earned a PhD in integrative biology. Cuellar-Gempeler's PhD thesis focused on ecological and assembly processes driving crustacean-associated microbial communities.
Since the beginning of her academic career, Cuellar-Gempeler has been interested not only in understanding the interaction between metazoans and microorganisms, but also in environmental education. Before graduating from the University of the Andes, she took a semester off to take a field guiding course at Kruger National Park, South Africa, where she improved her knowledge about African ecosystems and her leading and teaching skills.[9] As a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin she worked as an assistant teacher for Molecules to Organisms, ecology, limnology and scientific inquiry. Currently, at her assistant professor appointment she is teaching general microbiology, microbial ecology and marine microbiology. Cuellar-Gempeler's lab main focus is on Biodiversity-Ecosystem function relationships in pitcher plant meta-communities, microbial ecology of conservation of Astragalus applegatei's mycorrhizae, and microbiome of invasive marine invertebrates.[10] Her lab's main research areas are:
Biodiversity-Ecosystem function relationships in pitcher plant metacommunities - Research exploring the degradative functioning of bacterial communities, with investigation mostly based on experimental studies and on field sampling of the microbial biodiversity in pitcher plants.[10]
Microbial ecology of conservation: Astragalus applegatei 's mycorrhizae - Research exploring the effect of oil microorganisms on the success of populations of endangered plants. This branch of research is being done in collaboration with Kerry Byrne.[10]
Microbiome of invasive marine invertebrates - Research investigating the variation of microbial communities within an invasive, wide-spread anemone. The main focus of this research is to understand which conditions are driving microbial community assembly. Will Ryan and Stacy Krueger-Hadfield from University of Alabama at Birmingham are collaborating on this project.[10]
Awards and honors
Cuellar-Gempeler has been awarded an Early Career grant for $1 million by the National Science Foundation. This award is given to outstanding academics who have great potential to become role models in their communities while engaging in both research and education.[1][5]
Selected publications
C. Cuellar-Gempeler. 2021. Diversity-function relationships and the underlying ecological mechanisms in host-associated microbial communities. In: Advances in Environmental Microbiology, Vol 8. 297-326[11]
Munoz-Ucros, J., M. Zwetsloot, C. Cuellar-Gempeler and T. Bauerle. Spatio-temporal patterns of rhizosphere microbiome assembly: from ecological theory to agricultural application. Journal of Applied Ecology 58(5):894-904[12]
Cuellar-Gempeler, C. and P. Munguia. 2019. Habitat filters mediate successional trajectories in bacterial communities associated with the striped shore crab. Oecologia 191(4): 957-970[13]
T.E. Miller, M. L. Buhler and C. Cuellar-Gempeler. 2019. Species-specific differences determine responses to a resource pulse and predation. Oecologia 190(1) 169-178[14]
C. Cuellar-Gempeler, and M. Leibold. 2019. Key colonist pools and habitat filters mediate diversity of fiddler crab-associated microbial communities. Ecology 100(4): e02628[15]
C. Cuellar-Gempeler and M.A. Leibold, 2018. Multiple colonist pools shape fiddler crab-associated microbial communities. The ISME Journal 12:825-837. Accession number: PRJNA496296[16]
E. Canter, C. Cuellar-Gempeler, A. Pastore, T.E. Miller and O. Mason, 2018. Predator identity more than predator richness structures aquatic microbial assemblages in Sarracenia purpurea leaves. Ecology[17]
Holdridge, E., C. Cuellar-Gempeler, and C. terHost, 2016. A shift from exploitation to interference competition with increasing density affects population and community dynamics. Ecology and Evolution 6 (15):5333-5341[18]
Cuellar-Gempeler, C. and P. Munguia. 2013. Fiddler crabs affect bacterial assemblages in mangrove forest sediments. Community Ecology 14(1): 59-66[19]
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