I am a PhD student in the Biology Department at Duke University. I am interested in how symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi affects soil biogeochemistry and plant physiology. My current work is aimed at understanding how varying environmental and soil conditions structure communities of mycorrhizal fungi. I rely primarily on sequencing of environmental DNA to identify genes and species that respond to gradients of resource availability and environmental stress that are relevant to plant and fungal fitness. By employing both observational field studies and manipulative growth chamber experiments, I hope to uncover a genetic basis for the importance of fungal diversity in forest ecosystems.
Current Projects
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Environmental controls on dual-mycorrhizal fungal communities
Aspen trees grow across very different habitats and also form symbioses with a high diversity of root-associated fungi. I am investigating the physiological mechanisms that these fungi use to navigate environmental variability across these different habitats. I have established plots in aspen stands along a gradient of drought intensities in northern Utah and will be connecting seasonal patterns in whole fungal community gene expression to seasonal patterns in soil moisture and temperature.
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Host-specificity of successional patterns in Populus fungal community assembly
Populus trees form symbioses with arbuscular mycorrhizal, ectomycorrhizal, and endophytic fungi. It is thought that these different types of root-associated fungi colonize the trees at different time periods in the development of the tree. However, it is not known whether there is a predictable succession in fungal community composition across all species of Populus. Using a controlled growth chamber study coupled with an RNA-based long-read amplicon sequencing approach, I have found that there are strong patterns of fungal succession as trees mature from seedlings to saplings and that this succession depends on the tree species. Further work will aim to characterize the functional significance of these differences for nutrient cycling and plant health.
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