Sikes Microbial Lab​
People that we miss and made the lab awesome
Sikes Lab Axe Throwing to Celebrate Tenure/B-day! (Winter 2019) (L to R): Front Row: Asher, Thomas, Liz, Jacob, Sam. Back Row: Daniel, Ben, Tanya, Paige, Jim and Rob. Lots of other great people there, but the picture got taken late!
Sikes Lab Breakout! (Spring 2018) (L to R): Front Row: Ben, Asher, Thomas, Daniel, and April, Next Row: Jacob, Paige, Brian, Theo, Sam, Tom, Haley, Tanya, Don.
Summer Lab 2017 (L to R): Front Row: Erica, Paige, Tanya, Hanan (Doris Duke Fellow), Camille (Bever Lab), Brooklyn (Bever Lab REU), Theo; Back Row: Don, Tom, Dwayne (Doris Duke Fellow), Jacob, Dan (Camille). On her Way Back: Az
Justin King
Justin was an undergraduate who worked to sequence amphibian microbiomes (fungi and bacteria) in a collaboration with Rafe Brown's lab. Justin was awarded a UGRA for his work and worked hard to master bioinformatics and NGS sequencing. With these skills, he recently started a job at KCAS Bioanalytics and Biomarker Services in Kansas City.
Zoe Su_Huey Chan
Zoe is an undergraduate testing how ecotype, drought, and soil microbes impact seed production of Verbascum thapsus. Zoe is an amazing student who calls Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) home. Although COVID has kept her there this summer, she's won both a KU Field Station Award and a UGRA.
Sam Imel
For more than 2 years, Sam worked as an undergraduate on the fire-fungal project and just general help on all sorts of projects. Sam spearheaded our efforts to extract DNA from soils and litter as well as generate all sorts of data on soils following fires of different severity. Sam just accepted an industry position at Biodesix in Kansas City helping develop markers for lung cancer. It took me this long to finally get a good picture of him! Good luck, Sam!
Dr. Ashley (Az) Klymiuk
Az successfully defended her thesis (with honors) in December of 2018. She is currently the Paleobotany Collections Manager at the Field Museum in Chicago. Az originally joined my lab from the paleobotanical world (where she first focused on conifer anatomy and systematics of Pinaceae, before beginning work on fossil fungi). Her work bridges gaps between paleo and extant fungi in wetland systems. She explored how inundation alters fungal endophytes communities and structures in Typha plants. Since most fossil fungi are from wetlands, but most root fungal research is in terrestrial systems, her research may shed important light on early fungal evolution and the environment in which it formed. She's had many successful publications and awards including the Ida Hyde Scholarship (KU) and a pretigious NSERC scholarship (Canada).
Courtney Coppinger
Courtney developed an independent study project at the Free State High School Prairie Restoration Project. She explored how restoration methods and burrowing mammals could alter plant success either directly of through their effects on soil nutrients. She received an undergraduate research award (UGRA) and KU made an awesome video about her work. She is now based in Flagstaff, AZ where she is pursuing a biology teaching degree at Northern Arizona University.
Abby Glauser
Abby worked in the lab in 2014-2015 on a project to explore how management boundaries can drive differences in the communities of adjacent organisms. For example, if you setup a national park, can management differences within and outside the park drive ecological divergence at the border. Abby is currently a graduate student at Oregon State University wokring with Bruce McCune.
Taylor Patterson
Taylor worked in the lab in 2014-15, generally helping out and then specifically on the fire-fungal feedback project. Taylor completed microbial community sequencing, analysis of soil properties and measuring differences in decomposition.​ He is currently a graduate student at SUNY-ESF with Tom Horton.
Jacob Stops
Jacob was an undergraduate student at Haskell and KU working in the lab through the BRIDGE program. His project looked at mycorrhizal potential in prairie inoculum to help restoration.
Olivia Lynch
Olivia worked in the lab as an undergraduate in 2014-15. Her main project looked at mutualistic networks between mycorrhizal fungi and plants in the Rockefeller prairie. The project was a collaboration with Kathy Denning in Dr. Bryan Fosters lab and helped to create the first tri-trophic mutulistic networks.
Thomas Anneberg
Thomas worked in the lab as an undergraduate in 2015. He learned a lot about culturing and sequencing as well as helping organize a database on Trichomycete fungi. Apart from my lab, he was also an honors thesis student in Dr. Jennifer Gleason's lab. He is currently a graduate student at Syracuse University in Dr. Kari Seagraves lab exploring how plant polyploidy affects interactions between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.