Microbes are powerful living agents that persist through planetary changes and essentially keep the world alive. Arul is passionate to characterize microbial communities in different ecosystems and decipher their ecological and evolutionary interactions with other organisms.

Currently, in the Extavour group, in association with a team of multidisciplinary biologists, he is investigating the role of gut microbes in adaptation of Drosophila to diverse breeding-substrates and the associated evolution of reproductive capacity.

Arul’s early works were on a group of filamentous microbes commonly known as actinomycetes. He discovered that actinomycetes isolated from diverse environments have impressive biosynthetic capabilities, which are often unrealizable in vitro; these microbes simply could not produce these compounds when isolated in a dish. This functional limitation motivated a significant shift in his research direction to include their native habitats into the context. Consequently, he became committed to examining the role of microbes within their native habitats and investigating complex microbe-environment associations by bridging lab experiments with field data. He ascertained that the evolution of biosynthetic capabilities of actinomycetes aligns well with the nature of associated environment. In the laboratories of Professors Yuval and Jurkevitch, his subsequent studies primarily focused on how dynamically adapting microbiomes influence ecological success of insect hosts.