Undergraduate Stacey Pedraza was awarded a Higher Education Research Council (HERC) Fellowship for the Spring 2022 semester and will be working on a project examining how pitcher-plant associated microbial communities break down different types of insect prey. Congratulations!
New paper out today in mSystems
A new perspective paper was published today in mSystems! This paper came out of our lab’s NSF MTM collaboration with a great group of people, and is titled: “Exploring Microbiome Functional Dynamics through Space and Time with Trait-Based Theory.” It’s open access and you can find it here: https://doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.00530-21. It is part of a special series called “Deciphering the Microbiome.”
Summer Undergraduate students presenting their research posters!
So proud of the four summer undergrads who have done great research! They are presenting posters tomorrow at ICUR (https://boisestate.edu/icur/). Also proud of the grad students and postdoc who stepped up to be fantastic mentors. Great job everyone!
Welcome, Erica!
Erica Holdridge joined the lab this January, 2021, as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow. She will be studying how bacterial viruses in the Sarracenia purpurea pitcher plant system affect bacterial communities and ecosystem functioning. It’s wonderful to have her as part of the team!
October 2020: Welcome to Stacey Pedraza
Stacey, an undergraduate student, joined the lab as a Research Tech at the beginning of October. We are thrilled to have her on board!
Fun Fall Seminars
Leonora gave seminars at Tulane University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and University of Oregon between September and October, 2020. They were all virtual, but still a lot of fun! So great to talk with friends and new people about science. You can watch my U of O talk on YouTube if you are interested.
August, 2020: Welcome to Jessica Bernardin and Aubrey Osorio
In August, 2020, both Jessica (new PhD student) and Aubrey (undergraduate student) started in the lab. And Jacob Heil officially transitioned from Research Technician to PhD student. Welcome to all! So happy to have you as part of the team.
NSF Microbiome Theory and Mechanisms grant!
We are super thrilled to have been awarded an NSF Understanding the Rules of Life: Microbiome Theory and Mechanisms grant!! It is a collaborative grant together with Ben Baiser at University of Florida, Erica Young at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Zac Freedman at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sarah Gray from the University of Fribourg and Dominique Gravel from Université de Sherbrooke are international collaborators. Our project is titled: Using successional dynamics, biogeography, and experimental communities to examine mechanisms of plant-microbiome functional interactions (more info here). We will be using Sarracenia purpurea pitcher plant microcosms as our study system.
Four new papers out in March and April 2020
Four papers all came out right around the same time, in March and April of this year. Two were led by Kadeem Gilbert and were about microbial communities in different Nepenthes pitcher plants from Southeast Asia: “Tropical pitcher plants (Nepenthes) act as ecological filters by altering properties of their fluid microenvironments” and “Investigation of an elevational gradient reveals strong differences between bacterial and eukaryotic communities coinhabiting Nepenthes phytotelmata”. One was led by Lauren Shoemaker and Allie Barner, and came out of a Research Jam they initiated at the Santa Fe Institute: “Quantifying the relative importance of variation in predation and the environment for species coexistence”. And the final one was the main paper coming out of my postdoc: “Context-dependent dynamics lead to the assembly of functionally distinct microbial communities”. Very exciting to have them all published!
Seminar at Utah State University
On February 26th, 2020, Leonora gave a talk for the Biology Seminar series at USU. It was great to meet with Robert Schaeffer, Valerie Martin and others to talk about plant, insect, and microbial interactions.