What's new in the lab?
September 2024
Multiple members of the Kennedy lab attended the 50th Smith Foray in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was a really fun event, with lots of beautiful mushrooms and good times IDing them. Also a big congrats to Lang on his first thesis paper acceptance at Ecosystems – well done!
August 2024
A lovely visit to Manchester by Peter and Eduardo for ICOM12 and connect with multiple lab alums (Chris, Louis, François). Anahi presented at ESA on necromass in climate-altered conditions and the first necromass RNASeq paper was accepted at AEM – thank you to Jessie Novak and Jeffrey Gardner on that team-up! Finally, welcome to Eivind Ronold, a visiting Ph.D student from the University of Oslo.
July 2024
Congrats to Eduardo on completing his thesis – felicidades Dr. Pérez-Pazos!
June 2024
Great representation at the MSA 2024 meeting – thank you Nishia, Lang, and Achala for attending and sharing your research. And congrats to Lang on winning the Blackwell award for outstanding graduate student presentation! Additionally, the Itasca ForestGEO first census has been completed – amazing work by a huge team across many years!
May 2024
Big congrats to Talia on successfully defending her thesis – go Dr. Michaud! Our lab and the Cavender-Bares lab hosted a multi-day visit from our Chinese and American collaborators on NSF Dimensions of Biodiversity grant at Cedar Creek in addition to welcoming a new postdoc to the lab – Kathleen Thompson.
April 2024
Two new students will be joining the lab in the fall – Eva Schwarz and Erica Houser. Congrats to Lang on receiving a UMN DDF! And a thanks to Lang and Katie for attending and presenting at ESA Great Lakes Region in Michigan.
December 2023
Talia's paper on nitrogen isotopes in herbarium specimens over the last 14 decades in Minnesota was accepted for publication at New Phytologist - congrats Talia!
September 2023
Very excited to report that Chris Fernandez's work on ectomycorrhizal interaction networks at B4Warmed has been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Super grateful to Chris and all the B4Warmed team for the team effort - check out Chris's lab at Syracuse, particularly if you are excited about graduate studies in mycorrhizal ecology!
July/August 2023
A great representation by the Kennedy lab at MSA and ESA this summer! Eduardo, Lang, and Nishia all presented at ESA, while Talia, Anahi, and Katie all presented at MSA. Further, Anahi's core necrobiome paper, which was a great collaboration with François Maiilard and Petr Baldrian, was accepted at FEMS Microbial Ecology - congrats Anahi!
June 2023
Our Itasca ForestGEO completed a full 10 ha of the census of the plot! We have 5 more ha to go next summer, but this was an amazing effort. Thank you to Hakeem, Ratz, Briana, Lex, Erica, Soren, Talia, Lang and Justice! And a second thank you to IBSL for the support of Lang and Justice through the White Earth Internship. Finally, a welcome to Oliv Yesker, a new undergrad working with Katie this summer (keep an eye out for the bison!).
April 2023
Two exciting lab updates: 1) A new paper led by Katie Beidler on the ectomycorrhizal fungal communities in neotropical dry forests was accepted for publication in the Journal of Ecology and selected as the editor's pick - well done Katie! A big thanks to Jennifer Powers, Juan Dupuy, and many others for a great team effort. 2) Major congrats to Eduardo as a recipient of the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Minnesota, which will support his final year in the lab!
March 2023
A double win - Briana decided to stay at the University of Minnesota for her Ph.D. studies in our lab and she is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship - congrats Briana!
December 2022
Peter was selected as the next PMB Wardle Chair of Microbial Ecology. This five-year chair award, which starts in June 2023, will allow the lab to explore several exciting new research directions in microbial ecology. A big thank you to PMB for the support and to CBS for the funding. Finally, a big congrats to Elizabeth Borer, who was just named the EEB Wardle Chair of Microbial Ecology.
August 2022
A range of updates here: 1) Nishia and Talia attended ESA 2022 in Montreal and presented on their thesis research - go team! 2) Peter and François had a review of the microbial communities associated with decomposing necromass accepted at Trends in Microbiology, 3) Peter started in his new role as Interim Associate Dean of Research in the College of Biological Sciences, 4) Hakeem wrapped up an outstanding summer of research help for Eduardo and the lab - thank you Hakeem!, 5) Achala Nayaranan started in the PMB grad program as a member of the Kennedy lab - welcome aboard Achala!
July 2022
Peter, Eduardo, and Briana attended the MSA meeting in Gainesville Florida. Briana was awarded one of two "Best Undergraduate Poster Presentation" for her work on fungal-bacterial interactions during necromass decomposition. Congrats Briana!
Lang successfully led the harvests of two big Gadgil Effect related experiments that will be part of his Ph.D. thesis - well done!
June 2022
Peter just wrapped a second year of co-teaching Field Mycology with Jonathan Schilling at the Itasca Biological Station. We had a great class of grad and undergrad students and the mushrooms were notably better than last year (including some tasty morels)!
Two new studies including multiple Kennedy lab members just came out in a special issue of the New Phytologist on the impact of global change on the plant microbiome. Congrats to François and Chris on the lab's second necromass-related study from the SPRUCE experiment and also to Nhu and Lotus on an transcriptomic analysis of Suillus-Pine responses to drought that was led by Kabir Peay's lab.
May 2022
Welcome Hakeem Hashmiri to the lab as a summer research assistant - Hakeem will be working closely with Eduardo to build, deploy, and harvest hundreds of samples testing the role of priority effects in necromass-associated microbial communities
Welcome Erica Houser and Catherine Glenn-Stone to the lab as summer field research assistants. Erica and Catherine are joining Talia and two high school interns at Itasca to continue our ongoing census work in the Itasca ForestGEO plot this summer.
April 2022
The Kennedy lab is getting bigger! An exciting welcome to Achala Nayaranan, who will be joining the lab as a new Ph.D. student in the PMB grad program this coming fall. Achala has been doing all kinds of great work on microbial ecology in the lab of Kristen DeAngelis at UMass-Amherst and we are very happy to have her come to UMN for her Ph.D. studies.
Briana gave a great poster presentation on her UROP research about bacterial-fungal interactions while growing on necromass at the UMN Undergraduate Research Symposium - well done Briana!
Congrats to Eduardo, Lang, Nishia, Talia, and Anahi on receiving grants to support their upcoming summer research and travel from EEB, PMB, and MMS!
February 2022
François has officially wrapped his time in the Kennedy lab as a post-doc after three amazingly fun and productive years. His presence has been super appreciated by all of us and wish him all the best in his next position!
January 2022
Craig's third thesis chapter - the HMMMM hypothesis - has been accepted at Global Change Biology - super congrats Craig! Also a warm welcome to two new members of the lab - Katie Beidler is joining the lab as a post-doc and Klara Peterson is joining the lab as the lab manager/technician. Very excited to have both of you in the lab!
December 2021
Briana Beatty and Caro Silvola were both awarded UROPs to do research in the lab in Spring 2022. Briana will be working on interactions between bacteria and fungi during the decomposition of fungal necromass while Caro will be analyzing plant and fungal herbarium specimens for C and N isotope signatures. Congrats Briana and Caro!
November 2021
Lang just passed his orals exam and is officially a Ph.D. candidate now - congrats Lang!
October 2021
Two new grants from NSF have been funded - one on climatic and environmental factors driving sexual versus asexual reproduction in fungi that is led by Bitty Roy (University of Oregon) and the other on the many dimensions of biodiversity in oaks and their associated symbiotic communities that is led by Andrew Hipp (Morton Arboretum). Both grants have large teams of great scientists and it will be a really fun to learn about fungi in all kinds of new habitats and hosts.
Congrats to Eduardo and Lang on passing their written preliminary exams - very excited for all the science you both proposed.
June 2021
A quick start to summer update. First, a big congrats to Dr. See! Craig successfully defended his thesis and is headed to Northern Arizona University to start a post-doc with Ted Schuur. He will be sorely missed by all at UMN, but hopefully his MN roots will have coming back to visit often. Second, welcome to Anahi Cantoran! Anahi is an incoming Plant & Microbial Biology graduate student who will be joining the Kennedy lab starting in summer 2021. Third, congrats to Ylva Lekberg and the NutNet team on an exciting publication about the global effects of fertilization on different fungal guilds in grasslands!
May 2021
Peter got a chance to spend 10 days at the Itasca Biological Station co-teaching Field Mycology with Jonathan Schilling. Aside from limited rain making fleshy fungi a bit hard to find, it was a great chance to explore all kinds of fungal biology and ecology in the field.
April 2021
Excited to announce that EEB graduate student Nishia Nieves is officially co-joining the Kennedy Lab - she is co-advised by Peter Reich and is interested in working on mycorrhizal responses to global change, particularly at the temperate-boreal ecotone.
March 2021
Peter's research collaboration with Alvaro Duque examining long-term trends in carbon dynamics of Andean forests was just accepted for publication in Nature Communications. This is a really outstanding study showing that Andean forests represent a key current and future global carbon refuge. Congrats Alvaro and team!
Both Eduardo and Talia are recipients of a 2021 Minnesota Mycological Society research award. Additionally, Eduardo is the recipient of the 2021 Tester Fellowship, which will support his summer research at the Itasca Biological Station and Laboratory (IBSL). Big congrats Eduardo and Talia and thanks to MMS and the IBSL!
January 2021
Multiple positive updates to share: #1) We recently found out from NSF that our grant studying the genomic and functional aspects of necromass decomposition was recommended for funding! The team includes multiple PIs - Jonathan Schilling and Peter at UMN, Jeffrey Gardner at University of Maryland-Baltimore County, and Jennifer Pett-Ridge at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Super excited to get started on this project in the spring - thank you NSF! #2) Three publications from the lab have come out since the last update: Lotus Lofgren's study of host specifity through a large-scale comparative genomics analysis of ectomycorrhizal fungi, Craig See's study of the decomposition of diverse necromass and the best models to explain their rate of decay, and François Maillard's study of the long-term dynamics of fungal necromass decomposition in a boreal forest in Finland. Great work team - check out the lab publications page for details. Finally, Briana Beatty, a PMB undergrad at the University of Minnesota joined the lab - welcome Briana!
September 2020
A number of new collaborative studies from the lab have been published or accepted for publication, including work led by Luke McCormack, François Maillard, Caroline Daws, and Joe Gagne. Check out the lab publications page for updates.
We just found out that our sabbatical collaboration with Juan Dupuy and Julio Campo to study biogeochemical cycling during tropical dry forest succession in Mexico was recommended for funding from CONACYT (the Mexican equivalent of NSF). For this project, the Kennedy lab will assist with characterizing the microbial communities in long-term research plots in the Yucatan Peninsula using long-read sequencing. Congrats Julio and Juan!
July/August 2020
Summer meetings, albeit in a virtual format, highlighted some exciting research from lab members past and present. François presented on his work about wood decomposition at the continental scale in an organized symposium at MSA 2020. Chris Fernandez presented on his second round of work in the B4Warmed experiment at ESA 2020 and Craig presented and mentored a number of posters at ESA as well. Well done team!
June 2020
We just found out that our grant proposal to continue work on the Gadgil Effect was selected for funding at NSF! This work will involve collaboration with Sarah Hobbie locally and with Matt Smith and Kabir Peay nationally. Really excited to keep exploring this topic with fantastic colleagues!
April 2020
Three exciting updates on graduate students in the Kennedy lab. First, a big congrats to Craig See on receiving a doctoral dissertation fellowship from the UMN Grad School. This highly competitive award will support Craig's final year of thesis research. Second, both Eduardo Pérez-Pazos and Lang DeLancey won research scholarships from the Minnesota Mycological Society to support their initial thesis research. Third, Talia Michaud, an undergraduate student at Mt. Holyoke College, decided to join the Kennedy for her doctoral studies in the Plant and Microbial Biology graduate program. Congrats Craig, Eduardo, and Lang and welcome Talia!
January 2020
Three new studies from diverse lab collaborations are published. The first examines the dynamics of fungal necromass decomposition in soil and wood in the boreal forests surrounding Lake Itasca. It is François's first pub as a post-doc in Minnesota and the first publication ever for Erin Andrews, a star undergrad from Kennedy lab - congrats both! The second is a taxonomic analysis of the Pseudoomphalina kalchbrenneri complex in North America. Collections from the IDENT experiment at Cloquet, MN are part of the newly described species, P. anticostica. The final is the result of a large team effort led by Amy Zanne to highlight the value of using a functional trait-based perspective in studies of plant-associated fungi. It introduces a novel database, Fun^Fun, that contains a large number of fungal traits, ranging from gene content to spore coloration.
November 2019
Peter started his Fulbright fellowship in Medellin, Colombia. He will be working with researchers at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Alvaro Duque) and the Universidad de Antioquia (Aida Vasco-Palacios) studying links between below- and aboveground biodiversity in Colombian forests.
October 2019
Our multi-year experimental research on the "Gadgil Effect" was recently accepted for publication at New Phytologist - congrats Chris and Craig!
September 2019
Welcome to Eduardo Perez Pazos and Lang DeLancey - new graduate students in the Kennedy lab. Eduardo is coming from Mexico City, Mexico, where he completed his undergraduate and master's studies at the National Autonomous University (UNAM). Lang, who will be co-advised with Sarah Hobbie, is coming from the University of Michigan. Both are joining the EBB graduate program.
August 2019
Our lab's collaboration (and first study!) of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities in the Forest and Biodiversity (FAB) plots at Cedar Creek was published in FEMS Microbiology Ecology - congrats to lead author Jake Grossman (now at the Harvard Forest Arnold Arboretum)!
A number of excellent presentations were made by Kennedy lab members at the 2019 MSA meeting in Minneapolis - great job Lotus, François, and Joe!
Peter began his year-long sabbatical. In Merida Mexico, Peter will be working with Dr. Juan Dupuy Rada at the Centro de Investigacion Ciencia de Yucatan (CICY) studying links between soil fungal and plant community diversity in tropical dry forests (part of a larger collaboration with UMN professor Jennifer Powers).
June 2019
Toko Mori, an outstanding curatorial assistant in the Bell Herbarium fungal collections, will be moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her family. She has done a fanatistic job over the last two years of organizing and accessioning hundreds of fungal collections, particularly those of Patrick Leacock and David McLaughlin. Best of luck in your new endeavors Toko!
May 2019
Lotus successfully defended her Ph.D. with a fantastic public seminar in the Bell Museum of Natural History - so proud of the first Ph.D. to come from the Kennedy lab! Lotus will be starting a post-doc at the University of California Riverside in Jason's Stajich's lab in the fall doing more outstanding genomics-enabled research on fungi.
April 2019
Craig is the recipient of a DOE-supported graduate student research fellowship to work in the lab of Jennifer Pett-Ridge at Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory this coming fall 2019 and spring 2020. He will be examining the effects of forest mycorrhizal type on fungal necromas decomposition C and N dynamics using a combination of techniques, including NanoSIMS and stable isotope probing (SIP) analyses. Congrats Craig!
The lab gathered to say goodbye to Amanda Certano. Amanda is starting a new position as a research scientist at CoreBiome. Her work as the lab technician over the last three years has been truly outstanding - she will missed dearly, but we all are excited to see her move on to a fantastic new opportunity!
Joe was awarded a second UROP to continue his studies of fungal ecology (this time with lots of mycorrhizal seedling bioassays) in the Kennedy lab - congrats Joe!
March 2019
Two new grants were funded through the Itasca Biological Laboratories Seed-to-Root Program! In collaboration with Lee Frelich (Forest Resources) and Yue-Hua Hu (Xishuangbanna Tropical Research Institute), Peter will lead the installation of a new 16 ha ForestGeo plot at Itasca. Peter will also be collaborating with fellow PMB faculty member Trinity Hamilton to use on-site long-read sequencing to studying microbial diversity in Lake Itasca and surrounding aquatic environments.
Welcome to François Maillard, who is a new post-doc joining the Schilling and Kennedy labs. François completed his Ph.D. research in France studying organic matter decomposition in forest ecosystems. With dual expertise in microbial community profiling and physiology, François will be working on range of decomposition-related projects co-targeted by the Schilling and Kennedy labs.
January 2019
Two new papers from the lab have been accepted for publication in Ecology Letters - the first is looking at fungal necromass decomposition dynamics in the SPRUCE experiment and the second examines global patterns of the ecological factors controlling fine root decomposition. A super congrats to the lead authors, Chris and Craig, respectively!
November 2018
Peter visited Kew Royal Botanical Gardens and gave a talk at the British Mycological Fall Meeting. Walking the still lush grounds of Kew gardens in unseasonally sunny and dry conditions and chatting with all kinds of different scientists was a real pleasure. Many thanks to Martin Bidartondo!
Welcome to Dr. Yue-Hua Hu, a research professor at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Research Institute in China. Dr. Hu is an expert in plant community ecology, but has recently begun working on soil and phyllosphere fungal communities. He will be visiting the Kennedy lab for a full year.
October 2018
Peter was invited to give a plenary talk at the Mexican Mycological Congress in Xalapa, Mexico. It was a fantastic experience, thanks to Roberto Garibay-Orijel and all the congress organizers!
August 2018
The genomes of Suillus continue to roll out, including the first species from the host Pseudotsuga - S. lakei. Others that have come out in 2017 and 2018 include S. ampliporus and S. paluster (on Larix) and S. tomentosus, S. subalutaceus, S. bovinus, and S. occidentalis (on Pinus). Really excited to continue our phylogenomics and comparative genomics work with members of the Suillus Consortium. If you are interested in joining contact Nhu Nguyen.
Luke McCormack is moving to a new position as a staff scientist at the Morton Arboretum in Illinois. Many congrats on the new position - looking forward to seeing your great work continue there.
July 2018
Lotus and Caroline both won outstanding student poster prizes at the International Mycological Congress for their work on rRNA copy number and microbial distance-decay patterns, respectively. Excellent work - congrats!
Two new papers for the lab are coming out in Soil Biology and Biochemistry. The first is led by Lauren Cline and explores the effect of organic nitrogen addition on fungal community richness and composition in oak and pine forests at Cedar Creek (spoiler alert: it is surprising similar to the effects of inorganic nitrogen). The second is led by Amanda Certano (her first first author paper!) and looks at the decomposition of fungal necromass with contrasting morphologies (diffuse v. rhizomorphic). See the publications page for more details.
June 2018
A pair of Rhizopogon genomes generated by Amanda Certano and the JGI team have been released - R. truncatus and R. vulgaris. This is an exciting collaboration with Joey Spatafora and Francis Martin as part of the 1KFG: Deep Sequencing of Ecologically-relevant Dikarya project.
May 2018
Chris Fernandez and Louis Mielke are both moving into new positions at UMN and in Sweden, respectively - the Kennedy lab has been greatly enriched by your collective presence for many years, thanks for everything.
Lotus won a UMN Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (DDF) to fund the final year of her thesis research - super congrats!!
March 2018
Louis Mielke returned to the lab to help build a pipeline for getting fungal collections into the Bell Museum herbarium. We have added over 200 new collections since then and are working closely with Patrick Leacock to accesion his many collections from his master's and Ph.D. theses at UMN. Thanks to Toko Mori for fantastic efforts getting Patrick's collections organized.
Joe Gagne was awarded a UROP to study fungal effects on decomposition at Cedar Creek this summer - congrats Joe!
Luke and Peter are starting a new set of projects with a team of researchers at Clemson University to study the effects of mycorrhizal colonization on fine root decomposition - a big thanks to NSF for funding!
February 2018
Peter visited Norway and got to see both UiO and NMBU - thanks to Havard and Line for a fantastic visit. (Peter also attended the 2018 NEFOM meeting in Uppsala and talked about using open source fungal databases to enhance ecological inference - thanks to Karina Clemmensen and the other NEFOM organizers for the invitation).
Lotus's first thesis chapter on the unusual host associations of Suillus subaureus came out in New Phytologist - well done!
December 2017
Both Lauren Cline and Erin Andrews will be moving into new positions starting in January. Both of you are amazing scientists - thanks for all of your many contributions to the Kennedy lab!
September 2017
Our new paper on how melanin in mycorrhizal fungal necromass affects microbial decomposer structure (both fungi and bacteria) is accepted in Journal of Ecology - congrats Chris!
Our commentary of the new paper by Leho Tedersoo and colleagues about the use of PacBio for metabarcoding of fungi is accepted at New Phytologist - congrats Zewei and Lauren!
August 2017
Lauren, Chris, Craig, Luke, and Caroline all presented at ESA 2017 in Portland, OR. A great showcase of the diversity of research in our lab. Lotus presented her work at ICOM9 in Prague, Czech Republic and was awarded the Harley medal for outstanding student presentation - congrats Lotus!
A sad and happy good bye to two great members of the Kennedy lab - Obi Wamuo and Caroline Daws. Obi was a superstar undergrad in the lab this summer and Caroline was an outstanding first year grad student. All the best at U Chicago and Stanford, respectively.
June 2017
Just had a great visit for our collaborators in Norway from University of Olso and Norwegian Life Sciences University. Havard, Line, Ynvgild, Luis, and Sunil all visited the SPRUCE site in northern Minnesota and learned Chris' jedi ways with fungal necromass generation first hand.
Our collaboration with the Knights lab comparing closed reference, open reference, and de novo clustering for fungal HTS datasets is accepted at New Phytologist. Congrats to Lauren and Zewei on the Kennedy lab side and Gabe on the Knights lab side - a truly team effort.
Amanda is making great progress on generating Suillus genomes - our first from the lab, S. tomentosus, is officially out. A very fun collaboration with Nhu Nguyen (U Hawaii), Sunny Liao (U Florida), and Rytas Vilgalys (Duke U) - thanks NSF!
May 2017
Lauren's lead on the effects of fungal wood endophytes of decomposer community structure and functioning is accepted at Functional Ecology - congrats Lauren!
Nico Benucci for Michigan State is visiting the lab to help harvest the first round of our truffle competition experiment. Not only is he an expert on truffles, but he is a great cook too! Thanks so much for coming across the lake for a really fun and productive visit.
February 2017
Our first efforts to do high throughput sequencing with PacBio are submitted to the UMGC - thanks to Chris for his GenoFest win and Ben Auch for lots of help with library prep.
Erin submits a UROP to fund summer research on fungal necromass decomposition - fingers crossed! (March update - UROP funded - congrats Erin, very excited for the summer).
November 2017
Double congrats to Chris for winning 4 PacBio cells worth of sequencing at the UMGC GenoFest and to Caroline for winning a Crosby fellowship to help cover her field research in summer 2017.
September 2016
Lotus won "Outstanding Student Oral Presentation" at the MSA meeting in Berkeley this summer - congrats!
Chris and Luke gave presentations at the ESA meeting in an organized oral session of mycorrhizal fungi.
Undegrad and recent grads Michelle, Alex, Eva, Erin, and Louis did lots of excellent research in the lab this summer.
Peter attended a workshop in Santa Barbara focused on building a fungal traits database - stay tuned on updates for that.
It looks FUNGuild is getting more attention as a community resource as evidenced by inclusion talks at both the ESA and MSA meetings (yeah!). 2017 will include greater database coverage - new additions of soft rot fungi and dung saprotrophs this summer - and the linking FUNGuild to the UNITE database.
Collaboration with the Schilling lab at UMN continues - see the lab publications page for the link about functional roles of endophytes as priority wood colonizers!
The first paper of the Suillus-Pinaceae grant is in press at Mycologia - a massive ITS-based Suillus phylogeny - congrats Nhu!
June 2016
Lots of good stuff happening in the lab recently - a couple of long-term projects just had papers accepted/published (see lab publications page).
Lotus passed her qualifying exam - she is officially onto Ph.D. candidacy!
Michelle Coblens joined the lab as a summer research assistant. She was an undergraduate at Macalester College and is teaming up with Chris on a wide range of fungal ecology projects this summer.
Chris, Louis, and Peter deployed nearly 1000 ingrowth bags into the SPRUCE experiment to look at the dynamics of mycorrhizal fungi necromass decomposition under different global change scenarios.
Chris and Peter got seed grant funding from the Norwegian Centennial Chairs Program to collaborate with Havard Kauserad, Line Nybakken, and Mikael Olson on a new project. Here is the abstract:
This project will investigate how plant-associated symbiotic fungi influence the storage of carbon in boreal forest soils. The work will specifically focus on how changes in soil fertility and climatic conditions influence the decomposition of dead fungal and plant biomass. Researchers at the University of Minnesota (UM), University of Olso (UIO), and Norwegian Life Sciences University (NMBU) will collaborate on a set of field-based observational and experimental studies located in both Norway and the United States. The research will leverage experimental infrastructure present in both countries and involve scientists with synergistic expertise in fungal and plant ecology, ecosystem biogeochemistry, molecular microbial identification, and bioinformatics. Collectively, the project will provide new insights into the role of plant-associated symbiotic fungi in carbon sequestration processes and how changes in resource availability and environmental conditions may mediate the belowground response of boreal forest ecosystems to climate change.
April 2016
Chris received the Mycological Society of America's Fungal Forest Ecology Post-doc Award to support his current research on the 'Gadgil effect' at Cedar Creek - congrats Chris!
Eva Carlson presented a poser of her UROP project on Quercus fine root morphology at the Univeristy of Minnesota Undergraduate Research Symposium.
Caroline Daws will be joining the lab in the fall as an incoming Ph.D. student in the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior graduate program - welcome Caroline! Craig See will also be joining the lab as a shared incoming Ph.D. student with Sarah Hobbie in EEB - welcome Craig!
Amanda Certano has rejoined the lab as the technician on the Suillus NSF grant project - welcome back Amanda!
February 2016
Lauren has just received a NSF post-doc fellowship to study the long-term effects of nitrogen deposition on fungal communities in midwest forests. She will be co-advised with Jessica Gutknecht and use fungal collections at the Bell Museum of Natural History - congrats Lauren!
Nhu has just accepted a tenure-track faculty position at the University of Hawaii - congrats Nhu!
January 2016
Our collaboration with Francois Rineau and other European colleagues on the protein degradation abilities of ectomycorrhizal fungi was accepted for publication at Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Here is the .pdf - congrats Francois!
Chris' review on the decomposition dynamics of ectomycorrhizal fungal necromass is now out in Soil Biology and Biochemistry. Nice work Chris - excited to launch new necromass work at SPRUCE and beyond.
December 2015
Eva Carlson won a UROP award to work with Luke, Matt Kaproth, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, and Peter examining variation in root traits across a diverse suite of temperate and tropical Quercus species - congrats Eva!
November 2015
The book Mycorrhizal Networks has been published, which contains a chapter by Peter, Jen Walker (former post-doc) and Laura Bogar (former undergraduate student) on the ecology of non-networking hosts. In our chapter, we focused on Alnus-Frankia-ECM interactions and if you are unfamiliar with the lab's previous work on the topic, this chapter is a good summary.
September 2015
Lots of good stuff. Lauren Cline joined the lab as a post-doc - welcome Lauren! Two visiting scholars are also working with the lab - Drs. Luke McCormack and Ying Han. Excited to have both at UMN. The 'Gadgil Effect' review paper lead by Chris was published. Just a few weeks later, Peter's collaboration with researchers at Oregon State University and the University of British Colombia on vertical niche partitioning among ectomycorrhizal fungi was published.
August 2015
Many members of the lab attended ICOM and gave both oral and poster presentations - well done Lotus, Chris, and Nhu!
July 2015
FUNGuild (an open-access and open-annotation tool to parse community fungal datasets into ecological guilds) is out and in press - click here for the publication.
May 2015
Congrats to undergrads Louis M, Cher Ling T, and Léonce S-N for successful poster presentations. Lotus received an NSF-GRFP! Congrats Lotus!! Nhu just published a paper on maximizing ecological signal vs. noise in high throughput sequencing datasets. Chris just published a commentary in New Phytologist about moving fungal ecology beyond the black box.