Cyril Bontemps

**Bio:** I received my Ph.D in Microbial Ecology from the University of Lyon in 2005. Under the supervision of Catherine Boivin-Masson both in the LSTM (Montpellier) and LIPM (Toulouse) labs, my work focused on the creation of molecular tools to detect rhizobia that are plant mutualistic bacteria. I then continued my research activities from 2006 to 2009 at the University of York (UK) during two different post-docs. In the first one, in Peter Young’s lab, I prospected the rhizobia diversity in investigating the distribution and the evolution of the recently discovered b-rhizobia. In the second one, in the CNAP under the supervision of Neil Bruce, I studied the diversity of explosive-degrading bacteria and their involved mechanisms. I then joined the DynAMic Lab in September 2009 as a lecturer (assistant professor) **Research**: In using approaches from microbiology to genomics, my current work focuses on the evolution and on the ecology of *Streptomyces*. In using *Streptomyces* collections created from grains of soil, I tried to measure the evolution of *Streptomyces* in their natural environment and decipher what are the main drivers of this evolution. I also tried to infer the consequences of this evolution on the ecological traits at the population level. I am also interested in exploiting the *Streptomyces* functional diversity in more applied projects (*e.g*. developing biosensors for wood degradation, discovering of molecules with interesting activities…). **Teaching**: As a lecturer, I teach 192H per year to Bachelor and Master of Science students (from years 1 to 5). My main teaching topics are Microbiology, Evolution, Phylogeny and Microbial Ecology.