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

Grassland Ecologists.. in the lab!

October 17, 2014

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. We hope to see that different genotypes of Andropogon gerardii have differences in plasticity over a soil water content gradient.

 

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