Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units (CESU)

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) intends to issue a Single Source Cooperative Agreement Award without competition to Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) for efforts to cooperatively characterize and evaluate aquatic microbial communities, with a focus on potential undescribed pathogens of interest in order to further the conservation of multiple federally listed endangered and threatened species of fish and mussels throughout the Upper Tennessee River Basin (UTRB). This project will establish a partnership between the Serviceâ¿¿s Southwestern Virginia Field Office and MTSU to work cooperatively on the collection and evaluation of microbiome samples from Copper Creek. This tributary to Clinch River has seen recent, significant declines in multiple fish and freshwater mussel species that are not fully understood. Characterizing potential microbial pathogens is a significant step towards understanding to processes driving these declines.