Some great news this week, we found out that Joshlyn's SURF proposal to measure how native mycorrhizal fungi provide salinity tolerance for Panicum amarum and Taylor's SURF proposal that will explore how ghost crab burrow density change after disturbance and nutrient addition.  Gonna be a fun summer in the FUNGGii Lab filled with some great undergraduate student projects! congrats Joshlyn & Taylor!!!

Darrien was awarded the Donna J. Heinrich Environmental Education Grant by the Gopher Tortoise Council to conduct a community engagement project associated with Gopher Tortoise Day at the Mobile Botanical Gardens on April 23rd. Way to go Darrien!!!

J is up in Birmingham for the Southeastern branch of the American Plant Biologist Society this weekend, while Angela is heading to Vancouver to present 2 talks at the National Association for Research on Science Teaching (NARST). 

MS students Darrien Caudle & Madison Nelson presented their thesis work at the Graduate Research Symposium at the Student Center. They were 2 of 60 grads to participate in the symposium and had a steady flow of visitors to their posters! 

This spring, Joshlyn Rowland & Taylor Clay are joining the FUNGGii lab as undergraduate researchers. Joshlyn will be leading up a greenhouse project exploring how native Dauphin Island mycorrhizal fungi may promote salinity tolerance in Panicum, while Taylor is going to be looking at ghost crab burrowing density and movement around our disturbance x nutrient addition plots on Dauphin Island!  Should be a fun semester! Check out our People page for more info.

Emily found out today that she is being awarded the Walter F Coxe research grant to conduct some mechanistic greenhouse experiments to understand the role of coastal mycorrhizal fungi in dune grass growth, drought tolerance, and salinity tolerance.   These experiments will form the first steps to determining whether mycorrhizal fungi are a viable option for coastal dune restoration in the gulf coast.

Post-doc Angela Google had a new review paper come out yesterday in Studies in Science Education on the how undergraduate students approach studying biology!  This is a must read, check it out!!

New Paper led by Dr Kenna Rewcastle trying to understand what dominant plant removal does to ecosystem function across an elevational gradient!  Check it out!

We were down on Dauphin Island this morning working within our DRAGnet plots clipping aboveground biomass and we brought a few of the Biology graduate students along with us.  It was a beautiful sunny day to be working on the island!