Erika Hersch-Green
Michigan Technological University, MI·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Building a genome takes raw materials. DNA and RNA are rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, two nutrients that are often scarce in soil.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Plant Science & Agriculture
Genetics
- Topics
genome size
material costs
nitrogen
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Characterize how genome size, transcriptome expression and elemental composition relate to physiological traits across cytotypes, the forms of a species with different chromosome-set numbers, in one allopolyploid and one autopolyploid plant species.
- Measure in the field how genome size relates to photosynthesis, growth and nutrient use in many plant species and assemblages grown under different nitrogen and phosphorus supplies and climate conditions.
- Combine plant and consumer species occurrence data from nutrient-treatment plots with time-series phylogenetic modelling and manipulative field experiments to test how genome size shapes bottom-up and top-down control of biodiversity.
More about the research
Plants with larger genomes may therefore pay a higher material cost to grow and reproduce. This research asks whether nutrient supply shapes biodiversity at every level, from the size and activity of plant genomes up to whole communities of plants and the animals that eat them. The question matters as fertilizer runoff and pollution add nutrients to ecosystems and as climates shift.
Why it matters
Nutrient pollution from fertilizer is changing soils worldwide. This work could help predict which plants, and which communities of plants and consumers, gain or lose as nitrogen and phosphorus levels and climates change. That knowledge could inform biodiversity conservation and the management of nutrient-enriched ecosystems, and it adds basic understanding of how genome size links genes to ecological communities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jonathan Walter
University of California-Davis, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Test how plant functional traits, the physical, physiological and seasonal features of species, influence population and community synchrony, using multi-site time series from the global Nutrient Network grassland experiment.
Zakary Ratajczak
Kansas State University, KS·Ecology & Evolution
Test multiple rainout shelter designs at Konza Prairie to determine whether bison use areas under shelters at similar rates as unsheltered areas, by quantifying bison use and activity.
Karolina Heyduk
University of Connecticut, CT·Plant Science & Agriculture·Early-career
Develop a gene-expression-based screening tool to discover and catalog C3+CAM vascular plants, which use both normal and drought-adapted CAM photosynthesis.
The school
Michigan Technological University: 9 labs on PI Pages, $107M a year on research, 86 research doctorates a year.
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