Smith Lab

The overarching goal of my lab’s research is to better understand the consequences of human-caused global changes. We address long-standing, yet highly relevant questions about the functional roles of species in ecosystems, the causes and impacts of loss and gain of genetic and species diversity (at the population, community and ecosystem level), the factors that influence species coexistence and patterns of species abundance, and the relative strength of bottom-up (resources) vs. top-down (consumers) controls in structuring communities

Congrats to Alicia!

Congratulations to Alicia for successfully defending her Master’s thesis focused on the Shortgrass Steppe! The Smith lab is excited to see the great things Alicia does next!

Fall 2022 Graduate Showcase

Alex, Carina and Mary presented their research at the Graduate Showcase on November 16. Carina won the New Graduate Student Award! Congrats all!

LTER All Scientist’s Meeting

In September, Smith lab members got a chance to go to the LTER All Scientists Meeting 2022 in sunny California!!

New Postdoc in the lab

We are pleased to announce that Tim Ohlert is joining the Smith Lab in Fall 2022 as our new postdoc. Check out his website for more about his research! https://timothyohlert.weebly.com/

Grassland Ecologists.. in the lab!

We are interested in species changes at the community level, but we’re also interested in different, smaller scales. Looking at how transcription changes can help identify unique expressed signatures of different species and how they respond to different environments. Below, graduate students Francis Chaves and Ava Hoffman prepare samples in liquid nitrogen for RNA sequencing. […]

Shortgrass Steppe

Although most of the Smith Lab works at Konza, we sometimes visit the Shortgrass Steppe site in Eastern Colorado. Early season rainfall brings out the color at EDGE!

Oxalis stricta

Oxalis stricta (yellow wood sorrel) enjoys the early season sun before its grass neighbors grow tall.

Field Season

The semester is over, which means the lab is gearing up for field season! We are starting new projects and performing spring measurements on our many existing experiments. This year, Sally Koerner will be starting the CHANGE experiment, and the entire lab is launching EDGE, a huge collaborative effort across grasslands in the U.S. We’re […]

ESA 2014

Sally Koerner, Qiang Yu, Francis Chaves, John Dietrich, and Ava Hoffman have been accepted to present at Ecological Society of America’s 99th annual meeting in Sacramento, CA. Congratulations!

New Lab Members

We are pleased to announce that Andrew Felton and Jennifer Ackerfield are joining the Smith Lab in Fall 2014. Welcome!