Speaker
Description
Interactions between roots and soil microorganisms regulate resource movement through terrestrial ecosystems, influencing plant productivity, stress tolerance, and global biogeochemical cycling. Our research focuses on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi—ubiquitous root symbionts that enhance plant nutrient acquisition while distributing plant-derived carbon below ground. Because these processes occur on fine spatiotemporal scales within a complex matrix, many biologically meaningful responses are difficult to detect using bulk soil measurements or traditional DNA sequencing approaches alone. We combine stable isotope tracing (15N, 13C, and 18O), genomics, and imaging to quantify resource dynamics in the rhizosphere and hyphosphere—the zones of soil influenced by roots and fungal hyphae. These methods allow us to identify the specific organisms involved in resource transfer, quantify their contributions to ecosystem processes, and reveal biological responses that would otherwise remain obscured. In this presentation, I will highlight how synergistic interactions between mycorrhizal fungi and free-living soil microorganisms enhance plant nitrogen acquisition from organic matter, and how mycorrhizal fungi facilitate the transfer of plant-derived carbon to soil bacterial communities, increasing their drought tolerance. Finally, I will discuss how synchrotron-based X-ray imaging and spectroscopy can complement these approaches by resolving the microscale distributions of roots, microbes, minerals, and organic matter—ultimately connecting resource dynamics at the plant-soil interface with ecosystem-scale biogeochemical cycling.