The Plant Ecology Lab at the University of Bridgeport
Plants, microbes, & environmental change
Interactions between plants and microbes shape the world. Understanding these interactions is essential to our understanding of plant community composition, ecological succession, species diversity, productivity, and the spread of noxious plant species (just to name a few). We are also living in times of unprecedented environmental change, and this change has cascading effects on plant-microbial interactions and community composition. My work seeks to understand how environmental change shapes plant-microbial interactions so that we can predict how environmental change may alter plant communities and diversity patterns.
I am a community ecologist!
Originally from CT, I got my BS in Biology from Indiana University, my PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Connecticut, and worked as a postdoc at the University of Arizona.
My work has taken me from the tropical rainforest of Panama to a simulated landscape at the Biosphere2. I'm excited to begin a research program exploring how climate change is affecting the microbiome of the tidal marshes of CT while working at the University of Bridgeport!
