Congratulations to our very own Huda Khan, who presented on our Texas Sea Grant Restoration Project at the Houston Premedical Academy Symposium! As we began to gear up for the new semester, Huda was able to put an amazing presentation together and present on the impacts that microbes have on dune restoration efforts. She stood out at the medical school as the only student presenting an ecology project. We went to our project site at the University of Houston Coastal Center and did preliminary data collection to see what impacts microbes have had since our planting in August. So far the results are looking interesting, and we will begin to do more intensive data collecting once the plants begin to grow again in the spring, so stay tuned!

From our family to yours, we wish you all a very Happy Holiday season, and an even happier New Year! 

In addition to Kerri’s interview with Houston Public Media for UH Moments, lab members were featured in a video! Michelle (lab tech), Anna (graduate student), and Sandy (undergraduate research assistant) were asked to sample some techniques that the lab uses while Dr. Crawford talks about the Dune Restoration Project.

It has been about a month since our last update, and a lot has happened in the meantime!

Our graduate student Anna Hawkins presented her new and improved poster at the University of Houston’s Annual Graduate Student Symposium. Anna presented data from her first experiment for her graduate degree in the lab. Her project explored how different watering conditions can impact the relationship between plants and microbial communities. Nice work, Anna!

The lab worked really hard in conjunction with Dr. Michelle Afkhami at the University of Miami to set up a preliminary project looking at how arbuscular mycorrhizal microbes can impact competition among different genotypes of Medicago trunculata.

And as a final update, Kerri was interviewed by the Houson Public Media station for their program called “UH Moments“, a weekly podcast that discusses novel research, unique programs, and successes of the university. Information on Kerri’s interview was posted in both the Natural Science and Mathematics site and the Biology and Biochemistry website.

Please check back again soon as we continue to make strides with our research in the lab!

Congratulations to Tran Mai who successfully defended her senior honors thesis yesterday! Tran’s thesis was called “Effects of nematodes on plant community diversity and microbial symbiosis”, and studied how nematodes directly and indirectly impact plant biomass. We are extremely proud of the work she has done for her thesis in our lab.

Congratulations to Tran Mai, who presented her poster on her Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) project!  Tran looked at how nemotodes impact prairie plant diversity.  This work will be the basis for her senior honors thesis, which she defends later this month.  Tran worked very hard to complete her project, and we are so proud of her!

Tran with Kerri, fellow undergraduates Yash and Carlos, and lab tech Michelle.

Check out the most recent issue of UH’s Research and Innovation magazine and to learn about how scientists at UH are addressing climate change.  Our work on microbial responses to climate change is highlighted.  And, stay tuned  to learn more about what we discover with our project!

It has been a busy time in the Crawford Lab, sorry for the lack of updates! But, we have gotten a lot done in the meantime….

…Including harvesting a collaborative project with Christine Hawkes that tested how historic precipitation influenced intraspecific plant-soil feedback. There were some interesting findings, so keep an eye out for a new paper coming soon!

…We established our big project on dune restoration funded by the Texas Sea Grant! Thankfully, the weather was cloudy and a little rainy to keep us cool as we manually moved over 25 tons of sand into these 60 pots. In the pots, we planted two grasses primarily used in restoration projects on Galveston Island. Half of the pots received inoculum that contained soil microbes from the dunes in Galveston. We are testing how plant diversity and soil microbes influence initial plant establishment, soil development, and the diversity of colonizing native plant species.

…The lab came together to help Anna finish up a big project that is testing how climate change influences plant-soil feedback in coastal prairies.

…Anna and Kerri were also able to head over to Sunny Florida for ESA, where Kerri presented a talk on plant soil feedback.

…We were lucky enough to have Ph.D. student Maya Reese join us in lab for a semester. Maya did a rotation in our lab testing how plant plant diversity indirectly influences future plant performance through changes in soil microbial communities. Luckily, Maya is only a floor away from us, so we can still get to hang out!

…A new graduate student joined us on our road to scientific discovery! Hannah Locke, who taught science with Teach for America is joined our lab in Fall 2016 as a Ph.D. student! (Photo cred to Lyle Hawthorne).

…We also got a whole new team of undergraduate research assistants to help us with our research! With their many helping hands, our projects are moving forward and new discoveries are being made. For more information, please check out our “Lab Members” page!

Just because we haven’t updated in a while doesn’t mean that we weren’t busy!  Some highlights from the past few months:

Heather Slinn joined us as a lab technician for the summer.  She helped out with tons of experiments and taught us a bunch about Canada while our other Canadian, Yash, was in India. Heather left at the end of summer to start her PhD research at the University of Nevada – Reno.

We set up lots of new experiments over the summer. We even tried playing slot games at www.kingcasino.com and we enjoyed it very much. This one is testing how precipitation influences intraspecific plant-soil feedback.

We collected data from our long-term experimental garden in Michigan.  During one of our trips, Kerri presented her research to the public to help celebrate the National Park Service’s centennial.

We also celebrated the Ecological Society of America’s centennial at the annual meeting in Baltimore.  Anna and Kerri presented their work and ate some delicious crab cakes.

We did some field work closer to home, at the University of Houston’s Coastal Center.  Here’s the crew after digging up some dirt for Anna’s experiment.  At the right is our new lab tech, Michelle!

To celebrate Michelle’s arrival and help kick-off the semester, we had a lab party at Fearshire Farms! Despite the best efforts of the chainsaw-weilding madmen in the haunted house and cornmaze, we all made it back alive.