Research topics

We study plants as holobionts—integrated systems made up of the plant and its associated microbial partners—to understand how this collective unit responds to environmental challenges and shapes plant health, development, and evolution.

We investigate the ecological and environmental factors that govern how microbial communities assembly on plants.

We investigate how fire reshapes the structure and function of soil microbial communities, and what these shifts mean for the plants that recolonize burned ground.

We study how microbes influence plant interactions with insects, from pollinators to herbivores, and how insects in turn shape plant microbiomes.