Global changes, including changes in climate, biodiversity loss, and biological invasions are rapidly altering microbial communities and plant-microbe interactions. Our research goals are to help predict the consequences of global change for plant communities and harness plant-microbe interactions to develop targeted solutions for environmental problems. Our work embraces multiple scales of biological organization, from genes to ecosystems, and uses a variety of different approaches, including culture-based studies of plant-associated fungi and ‘omics methods to determine the structure and function of microbial communities. Most of our work takes a strong experimental approach, including large-scale manipulative experiments in the lab, greenhouse, and field. We work in many different systems, including grasslands, coastal dunes, and with model organisms.
The Crawford Lab
Plant community ecology