Isabela Borges is a graduate student in Sarah Fitzpatrick's lab in the Integrative Biology department at Michigan State University. Isabela won the J.S. Karling Graduate Student Research Award from the Botanical Society of America for her work on plant inbreeding on the legume-rhizobia mutualism. She is broadly interested in the feedbacks between community ecology and contemporary evolution, and their consequences for the persistence of small populations. Summer 2021 was a busy one. When I first proposed to conduct an experiment on two thousand plants, that just seemed like a nice large
Disentangling the complex effects of climate change on above and belowground communities: Reflections from an LTER Fellow
Graduate researcher, Moriah Young, is a Ph.D. student in Dr. Phoebe Zarnetske’s lab at Michigan State University. The lab uses open top chambers (OTCs) to study how biotic interactions and climate change directly and indirectly affect community structure and function at the KBS LTER. Climate change is a pressing threat to ecosystems around the world. From warmer temperatures to more unpredictable rainfall, climate change has shown to have a myriad of effects on ecosystems. Most research has focused on direct effects of climate change on species. For example, how does warming
Species interactions in prairie strips: Reflections from an LTER Fellow
Graduate researcher, Alice Puchalsky, is a Ph.D. student in Dr. Nick Haddad's lab at Michigan State University. Her research focus is on moths, butterflies, and interaction networks. When I began graduate school, I did not imagine myself eagerly watching a caterpillar writhe around in a plastic cup, wondering about its fate. But, that is where I found myself this past summer. I also did not imagine the delight I would feel in checking on that caterpillar the next day and finding that approximately 30 very small parasitic flies had emerged from that caterpillar’s body. I was hoping that
Studying climate change effects on plant traits: Reflections from an LTER Fellow
Graduate researcher, Kara Dobson, is a Ph.D. student in Dr. Phoebe Zarnetske’s Spatial and Community Ecology (SpaCE) Lab at Michigan State University. Her research focus is on the effects of climate warming and rainfall variability on plant traits. Climate change poses a looming threat to the functioning of ecosystems worldwide. Within ecosystems, my interest lies with plants and how they respond to stress caused by climate change. The way plants respond to stress varies widely and is dependent on things such as trait differences between plant species, differences in geographic location
Insects, big data and a passion for open science launch a rewarding career
Christie Bahlai shares how her entomology research and connections made as an MSU postdoc have contributed to work honored with a National Science Foundation early-career award. Postdoctoral researchers are critical contributors to Michigan State University’s (MSU) research, bringing experience and often fresh insight. Christie Bahlai, an assistant professor at Kent State University, was recently selected for a National Science Foundation (NSF) early-career award. Bahlai, a computational ecologist, earned degrees at the University of Guelph before joining University Distinguished
A peek at life under a wheat field: Reflections from an LTER Fellow
MSU graduate researcher, Allison Zahorec, is a PhD student in Dr. Doug Landis’s lab in the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University. When one envisions a typical midwestern farm, ‘biodiversity’ is hardly the first thing that comes to mind. Compared to more natural landscapes, agricultural lands can seem like ecological dead zones. Yet even the most intensively managed corn monocultures are teeming with life belowground. A few teaspoons of soil can contain over a billion individual organisms (largely microbes), and the diversity of soil-dwelling organisms is just as
SLAM: Scientists Love Acronyms, Man
KBS 2018 undergraduate summer researcher Emily Lindback is a junior at Franklin and Marshall College. She wrote about her Research Experiences for Undergraduates project working with mentor and LTER researcher Dr. Michael Abraha in the Robertson Lab. Lindback was funded by an NSF REU site award to the Kellogg Biological Station. Driving into Hickory Corners, I first noticed the dense green vegetation, many marshes, huge agricultural plots, and yes, cows. Hickory Corners seemed like a biologist’s dream, the perfect spot for a biological station.
Seeking a more resilient agriculture: the next chapter for the KBS LTER program
Imagine for a moment a Midwestern agricultural landscape in late August that has not seen rain in weeks. Some corn fields remain green, showing no sign of a moisture deficit while other fields have curled leaves, plants starting to yellow. Belowground, microbial communities between the fields are acting differently, too, some biding their time until a pulse of rain puts them in motion while others continue their work. Under the same climate and soils, why is one field more resilient to the stress of drought? What about that field helps it to remain productive? In the midst of global
Crops, climate, computers – An eye on complex cropping systems: Reflections from an LTER researcher
Each year the KBS LTER awards full and summer fellowships to MSU graduate students. MSU graduate researcher Prakash Jha is a PhD student in Dr. Amor Ines' lab in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences. He wrote about his 2017 KBS LTER summer fellowship project. The assessment of agricultural sustainability is complex. On the one hand, the increasing production trends are perceived to be critical to meet the increasing demand of food for the growing population. On the other hand, the excessive use of agricultural inputs to increase food production poses
The little known gas with a big impact
By KBS LTER volunteer Bill Krasean. Dr. Ying Zhang was a visiting researcher in 2017 in Dr. Phil Robertson's lab at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station in southwest Michigan. ~~~~ Ozone, the simple combination of three oxygen atoms, is both a naturally occurring and human-created gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. Atmospheric ozone is created naturally from gaseous substances emitted by lightning, soil, and vegetation, but it is also formed from pollutants emitted by human activities. Ozone is a mixed bag whose downside is a growing concern worldwide because of its negative