Sikes Microbial Lab
News Archive
NSF funded on Fire-Plant-Fungal Feedbacks!
We've been generously funded by NSF to study feedbacks between fire-fungi and plants. The research will focus on how fire severity alters fungal communities and their functional effects on fuels, both directly through decomposition and indirectly through plants. A postdoc advertisement associated with this project should be advertised soon, so stay tuned!
Welcoming Erica Fitzpatrick, Jacob Hopkins, and Catie Ausland!
Three new people have just joined the lab over the past month. Erica Fitpatrick is an assistant researcher, who previously worked in the Adler Lab before becoming a senior research associate at the Dana Farber Cancer Center. Jacob Hopkins and Catie Ausland are both starting PhD students. Jacob has been a dedicated undergrad at Indiana University where he worked with Jim Bever. Catie just completed her MSc with Nick Barber at Northern Illinois University.
A new paper accepted for New Phytologist led by Jennifer Bufford. This work focuses on spillover between native and non-native plant-pathogen associations in New Zealand. Pathogen spillover was common and native plants were more likely to have alien pathogens than vice versa. Increases in spillover over time and the high frequency of spillover emphasize the need for effective risk assessment and containment.
New project to study environmental stress as a driver of novel mutualism formation
Building on theoretical models in our recent Neobiota paper, the KU General Research Funding has generously provided funding to explore how increasing water stress might make non-native plants have a greater diversity of mutualists and depend on them more. The project will be headed by Kristen Manion, and continues our collaboration with Keryn Gedan and Clare Aslan. Woo-hoo!
Co-assembly of plants and fungal endophytes paper accepted at Ecology
Arrival timing differences of plants and soil biota may result in different plant communities through priority effects. Our study shows interactive priority effects between plants and fungal endophytes can alter the success of native and exotic plants. These interactive priority effects, particularly between plants and their associated microbes, may be an overlooked determinant of plant community structure and provide an effective management tool to inhibit invasion and aid ecosystem restoration. Pre-print soon!
Novel mutualisms can provide key insights into mutualism ecology and evolution
A new paper in Neobiota, coauthored with Clare Aslan (NAU) and Keryn Gedan (UMaryland), outlines how studying novel mutualisms canimprove our understanding of mutualisms in general. These early mutualisms are key to understand when and why mutualisms form, fail, and become stable. They also provide an important counter-balance to tradiational research on long co-evolved mutualisms that form our basis for understanding these pervasive symbioses.
2014
Az awarded KU fellowship
A belated congrats to Az for being awarded an EEB summer research fellowship. She was also granted admission and support to attend two separate courses at Wood's Hole Marine Biological Lab. Attendence at these was partially supported by the Ida Hyde Research Scholarship she previously received. Awesome work Az!
New Phytologist commentary on OTU delineation of fungi
Lekberg et al. 2014 show that OTU calling in NGS fungal datasets alters alpha diversity estimates of communities, but largely returns the same differences among communities (beta diversity). A commentary by Jeff Powell and I emphasizes that point, showing how the magnitude of these differences changes across scales and linking it to the main reasons for NGS sequencing: an improved understanding of fungal ecology. Check it out here.
KU Strategic Initative supports Establishing a Center for Metangenomic Microbial Community Analysis
In line with the KU Bold Aspirations, The KU Provost office todayannounced financial support to help establish a center to analyze the reams of microbial community data being generated by next generation sequencing technology. The proposal is a collaboration between Belinda Sturm, Sharon Billings, Stuart Macdonald, Jennifer Roberts and myself. The collaboration combines expertise across 4 different KU departments and the Kansas Biological Survey.
Microbiome getting lots of attention
NPR has a couple of great pieces on the human microbiome just out. If you have time to watch the video, its a fun adventure explaining some of the things we are learning about the microbial ecology of the human body. Our research is closely aligned with this, looking at the microbial ecology of soil and plant systems. Apart from their importance in nature, many of these plant/soil microbes are likely early colonizers of human bodies, leading to the ultimate microbiome that keeps you healthy (or not).
Mycorrhiza paper on interactions between AM fungi, soils and plants during succession now online.
Successional changes in soil had a big impact on AM fungal growth with late succession AM fungi poorly suited for early succession soils, but greatly increased hyphal and arbuscules production in late succession soils. Different plant hosts didn't have a significant effect on AM fungal growth and the different fungi didin't effect plant growth. Check it out here.
2013
Jayhawkery has begun: Fall 2013
Ben started an assistant professorship in Microbial Ecology at the University of Kansas in August 2013. If you are interested in joining the lab either as a graduate or undergraduate student shoot me an e-mail. Also keep checking for techincian positions to be announced sometimes in late 2013 or early 2014. For more information outside this site, check out the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Kansas Biological Survey where I'm cross-appointed.
Co-Assembly of Plants and Soil Fungi Preliminary Data
Tadashi Fukami (pictured at left), my collaborator on the interactive assembly project, will present early plant results for this project at the Current Themes in Ecology conference in the Netherlands. So far the data shows significant interactive effects on plant germination and biomass. The invasive plant responses are very interesting with poor germination and growth when this plant is given the head start, but only if fungi are from sites where it is common (disturbed and pasture). Native plant head starts or native fungal head starts eliminate these effects.
AM fungi from sand dune succession updated with new Glomeromycota taxonomy
I used the new taxonomy of Glomeromycota (AM fungi) as described by Oehl et al. (2011), to remap the AM fungi I found in sand dune spores and hyphae. The new phylogenetic tree shows several taxa falling nicely into the new clades, but several groups still are unresolved and likely merit further taxonomic description, especially those most abundant in intermediate and late succession!