Smith lab in the news!

The Smith and Knapp labs recently celebrated Carina for his master’s defense and Matt for his doctoral defense!

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….

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!

The Smith Lab had a strong showing at the 2025 Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD! Our students shared their exciting research through both oral presentations and posters, highlighting the breadth of work happening in the lab. From below-ground ecosystem dynamics to grazing and grassland community ecology, our team contributed new insights…

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…

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!