Graduate Student Research Projects
Emily Tate, MS Student, Goodwillie Lab
Fertilization influences on plant traits. Long-term fertilization and mowing treatments have brought about dramatic changes in plant community composition in a wetland site. Emily’s work will explore the biological processes underlying community assembly by characterizing the functional traits that are common in each treatment and measuring their plastic response to treatments.
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Gina Bledsoe, PhD Student, Peralta Lab
Fertilization impacts on plant-soil interactions. To examine how nutrient addition influenced the strength of plant-microbe interactions, we compared the bulk soil communities to the soil rhizosphere communities of two plant species that differ in abundance in fertilized and unfertilized plots. After 12 years, soil organic carbon and nitrogen and soil temperature were higher in fertlized compared to unfertilized plots. In addition, we documented significant effects of fertilization on the diversity and composition of the plant and bulk soil microbial communities.
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Joshua Thigpen, MS Biology (2015)
Goodwillie and Peralta Labs Fertilization and disturbance by mowing influences soil microbes. Research complemented previous work that was focused on the effects of nutrient addition and disturbance on plant communities. Results indicated that disturbance by mowing more than nutrient availability influenced microbial community diversity. Fertilized soils support higher plant biomass and potentially a higher ratio of fast growing, copiotrophic compared to slower growing, oligotrophic soil bacteria in more nutrient-limited conditions (ongoing bacterial isolate work in collaboration with undergraduates past and present: Katherine Dorronosoro, Casey Eakins, Sheriden Iroegbu, Jonathan LeCrone, David Morlock, Rene Vanek).
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