Plants are amazing survival artists capable of enduring harsh environments and thriving in newly opened niches. My research seeks to broadly understand how environmental changes and biological interactions re-model the genealogical histories across the plant’s genome, with the aim of identifying key innovations responsible for adaptive changes. At the macroevolutionary scale, I will demonstrate how whole genome duplications buffered plants through a historical global warming, and how ancient gene flows created hyperdiverse clades in the neotropics and Chinese Hengduan Mountains.

Beneficial members of the plant microbiome can increase nutrient availability for their hosts, protect their hosts against pathogens, and enhance host resilience against abiotic stress. While previous and ongoing studies of the rhizosphere microbiome have been critical for assessing the impact of specific plant-microbe interactions, their focus has overwhelmingly targeted bacterial and fungal members of the microbiome. Viruses are ubiquitous, outnumbering all other biological entities on the planet, yet they are remarkably understudied in the rhizosphere.

Climate change refugia in managed forests
By: Kavya Pradhan
(Hille Ris Lambers Lab)

Ascidian Invasion in the
Salish Sea
By: Megan Powers (Swalla Lab)