Author: Rima Upchurch

A new paper is out with Ines Ibáñez along with Zak lab collaborators that delves into questions about the true relationship for mycorrhizal fungal relationships with plants and how nitrogen availability affected their behavior. This study looked at growth data in mature trees for two different maple species and one oak species, AMF and EMF-associated,...

Rima Upchurch, whom started working in the Zak lab in 2006, has taken a new position at the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research (CIGLR) as a biogeochemist analyst. While she will no longer be working directly on campus, as CIGLR is housed in NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL), she will continue to...

Several past and recent lab alums were able to surprise Don with a retirement Party on April 25th. His official retirement isn’t until the end of May, but being sneaky we had a party early. Don started working as a professor at the University of Michigan for the then School of Natural Resources & Environment...

Jennifer Wen, a former SEAS Master’s student in the Zak lab, now has a paper out titled “Ammonium oxidation by bacteria and archaea have functional implications for nitrification across a forested landscape”. This work draws on her thesis work on the amoA gene of archaea along a natural nitrogen mineralization gradient, but it expanded the...

Morgan McPherson, a joint post-doctoral scholar in the Zak and Ibáñez lab at SEAS, has a new paper out titled “Arbuscular mycorrhizal diversity increases across a plant productivity gradient driven by soil nitrogen availability”. This study characterized the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in soils across a plant productivity gradient, coinciding with a nitrogen mineralization gradient. ...

This summer the Zak lab had the opportunity to host Olises Perez as part of the Aspirnaut program. The Aspirnaut Summer Research Internship Program, administered by Life Sciences Institute (LSI), brings rising Michigan high school seniors to UM to give them hands-on lab experience over a 6-week period. The goal is to encourage students, especially...

Brooke Propson, a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, whom works in Zac Freedman’s lab (former Zak lab post-doc), studied the ecosystem response and recovery after the long-term elevated nitrogen treatment was stopped. There is also a natural gradient of ambient N deposition due to human activity at these sites, as well. The study...

Sam Schaffer-Morrison, former SEAS student and current PhD in EEB at Michigan, has a review out with Don that argues that functional traits of mycorrhizal fungi should be included for consideration when belowground functional traits are being examined. These are incredibly important symbionts could add key mechanistic factors for plant performance (via nutrient uptake) if...

A revised 5th edition of Forest Ecology (ISBN 1119476089) is out now! Don is one of the co-authors. It has been 25 years since the previous edition and the authors wanted to retain the overall focus from the previous edition (ecosystem level), but update the text to include information about new ecological concepts and methods,...

Will Argiroff, former PhD student in SEAS, has a new paper out titled “Fungal community composition and genetic potential regulate fine root decay in northern temperate forests” that examined if fine root litter (~50% total litter production in forest ecosystems and fairly recalcitrant) decayed more rapidly when fungal communities have more genes that are known...