Susan Kalisz
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, TN·Ecology & Evolution
No organism lives alone. Plants, in particular, depend on partnerships with fungi in the soil — among the most widespread cooperative relationships on Earth — trading sugar for nutrients they cannot reach themselves.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Plant Science & Agriculture
Biology
- Topics
mutualism
arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi
AM fungi
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Determine long-term patterns in arbuscular mycorrhizal and pathogenic fungal communities on native plant roots, and how invasion by garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) reorganizes them, using a long-term field invasion experiment.
- Test how reorganization of plant-fungal mutualisms changes plant physiology, measuring carbon fixation through photosynthesis and nitrogen uptake in native plants.
- Measure whether disrupted mycorrhizal partnerships, soil nutrient availability, or both alter native plant growth, survival and reproduction.
- Integrate organismal, physiological and population data to test photosynthetic least-cost theory's prediction that costlier nutrient acquisition drives shifts in plant physiology and community demography.
More about the research
Those partnerships are also unusually sensitive to disruption. With warming temperatures, shifting rainfall and invasive plants projected to cover at least 17% of the land surface, the open question is how partner relationships get reshuffled and whether they still work afterward. This collaborative project tracks that reorganization from single organisms up to whole plant communities.
Why it matters
Invasive plants and a changing climate are rewiring the soil partnerships that native plants depend on for nutrients. Linking that rewiring to measurable changes in plant growth and survival could help land managers and restoration practitioners anticipate which native communities are most at risk from invasion, and the framework is intended to generalize to other global-change scenarios.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Frank Jones
Oregon State University, OR·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether feedback between adult trees and same-species seedlings shifts from negative to positive as drought and nutrient stress increase, mediated by fungal pathogens and mutualists.
Richard Lankau
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Track how soil microbial communities and food webs develop on Midwestern farmland after farming stops or agroforestry begins, comparing sites with different times since abandonment and restoration practices.
Jalene LaMontagne
University of Missouri-St Louis, MO·Ecology & Evolution
Test how CO2, temperature, water availability, nitrogen deposition and wildfire interact to affect seed quantity, mass, chemistry and germination in five boreal conifers, including black spruce and jack pine.
The school
University of Tennessee-Knoxville: 16 labs on PI Pages, $387M a year on research, 426 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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