Tom Smith

Tom Smith

Postdoc at Imperial College London, broadly interested in microbial ecology and evolution

About Me

I am a postdoctoral research associate, broadly interested in microbial ecology and evolution in the context of environmental change. I'm currently working with Prof. Tom Bell at Imperial College London, where we are investigating the ecological dynamics of holobiont microbiome assembly.

Latest News - Summer 2025

Our paper "Phylogenetic clustering of microbial communities as a biomarker for chemical pollution" is out in FEMS Microbiology Ecology!

We found that microbial communities exposed to chemical pollutants which impacted bacterial growth also altered the community structure, making them more phylogenetically clustered. This opens up avenues for using microbial community metrics to diagnose disturbed ecosystems. A digestible summary of the paper can be found on #FEMSmicroBlog.


We've also published the first paper from our tree hole perturbation work: Eco-evolutionary robustness of wild bacterial communities to experimental perturbation in the ISME Journal!

We limed wild bacterial communities living in beech tree holes and found robustness of the communities to the increased pH, as well as comparable rates of ecological and evolutionary responses. This is in collaboration with Tim Barraclough's group in Oxford, and is a rare example of applying perturbations as used in laboratory experimental evolution studies instead to wild bacterial communities.