IMCI Seminar Series

Tuesday | April 12th | 12:30 p.m.
Clearwater Room (ISUB) or join us on Zoom
https://uidaho.zoom.us/j/87540562860 Passcode 028591

Eddie Brzostek
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
West Virginia University

“The hidden half: How interactions between plants and microbes belowground drive ecosystem responses to global change”

Accurate projections of the future land carbon sink by global climate models depend on how they represent nutrient constraints on primary production. While empirical research has highlighted the rhizosphere (i.e., the area immediately surrounding roots) as a hotspot for the trading of carbon for soil nutrients between roots, mycorrhizal fungi, and free-living microbes; these important plant-microbial interactions are missing in the models.  Here, I will explore recent efforts to integrate root and mycorrhizal processes into models. First, I will make the case for including plant-microbial interactions in models by highlighting empirical evidence of their role in driving ecosystem responses to global change.  Second, I will show recent advances we have made to integrate dynamic interactions between plant and microbial functions into ecosystem and global scale models.  Finally, I will discuss preliminary efforts in my lab to begin integrating -omics data on microbial traits and functions into soil decomposition models.