Congratulations to Peter Pellitier for completing and defending his dissertation, Ectomycorrhizal fungi differentially obtain N derived from soil organic matter: implications for community assembly and forest response to climate change on June 29th. Thanks to his committee for all their support, especially during this time, Don Zak (chair), Deborah Goldberg, Ines Ibáñez and Tim James....
Author: Rima Upchurch
Don Zak named ESA Fellow
Don has been named as a 2020 Ecological Society of America Fellow (announced here). This fellowship recognizes ESA members who have made “outstanding contributions to … ecological knowledge”. They are elected for life come from all fields of science that are connected to ESA. One other UM Faculty was elected this year and two other...
Congrats Wes!
Congratulations to Wes Bickford for successfully defending his dissertation, Plant invasions and microbes: the interactive effects of plant-associated microbes on invasiveness of Phragmites australis, in December. Also congrats to his committee Deborah Goldberg (co-chair), Don Zak (co-chair), Ines Ibáñez, Tim James and Kurt P. Kowalski (USGS). Wes has been one of the busiest grad students...
Goodbye Danielle!
Danielle Snow, who has been working alongside us in the Zak lab for a little over a year now, is finally settling into being in the USGS at the Great Lakes office. Fun fact, she’s actually been working two jobs as she was hired for a full-time position in August, so I’m glad she’ll have...
Peter’s bark paper is out!
Peter and Sydney’s paper on the endophyte microbiome of bark, titled “Environmental filtering structures fungal endophyte communities in tree bark” is out online in Molecular Ecology. In it they examine the inner bark of different tree species to determine if bark is a reservoir for fungal groups (spores, latent fungi) or structures the community as...
Good luck to Etienne!
Etienne Herrick, our most recent molecular tech extraordinaire, is moving on from working in the Soils lab as she begins her life as a graduate student. Fortunately she won’t be moving too far as she has joined the Blesh lab here at SEAS. During her time in the lab Etienne worked hard on perfecting ECM-colonized...
Global Change Biology paper on roots is out!
Will’s paper in Global Change Biology, “Anthropogenic N deposition alters soil organic matter biochemistry and microbial communities on decaying fine roots”, is now out online and can be found here. It discusses how shifts in fungal and bacterial communities on fine roots in elevated N sites are related to biochemical responses that contribute to SOM...
Ecology paper online now
Another Ecology paper for the Soils lab! Don’s paper, “Anthropogenic N deposition, fungal gene expression, and an increasing soil carbon sink in the Northern Hemisphere”, in Ecology is now online. It discusses how the expression of fungal class II peroxidases were down regulated under experimentally increased N deposition and how this impacts greater soil C...
Pedobiologia paper out
A new paper is out for the Zak lab! A former EEB PhD student, Huijie Gan, has published her work on oribatid mites and how their communities are structured in Pedobiologia. The manuscript, titled “Scale dependency of dispersal limitation, environmental filtering and biotic interactions determine the diversity and composition of oribatid mite communities”, can be...
Ectomycorrhizal Fungi and the Enzymatic Liberation of Nitrogen from Soil Organic Matter: Ecosystem Processes and Underlying Molecular Mechanisms
The rate at which plants photosynthesize, thereby capturing carbon from the atmosphere, is limited by a number of factors including the availability of nitrogen (N) in soil. Past research has presumed that plants exclusively use inorganic nitrogen (ammonium, nitrate) for growth. Current work suggests that plants may have access to additional types of nitrogen in...