Alexa Phillips (she/her)

alexa.phillips@ku.edu

I am the Molecular Lab Manager for the Bever/Schultz Lab, and I am also assisting with the Dimensions project. Previously I have worked in labs focused on the learning behaviors of social animals, such as Monk Parakeets and Western Honeybees, but I am broadly interested in ecology and conservation. I am excited to learn more about plant-microbe interactions and how human disturbances are affecting prairie ecology.

Postdoctoral Fellows

Liz Koziol (she/her)

lizkoziol at ku.edu

My graduate work focused on native prairie mycorrhizal fungi. I collected prairie mycorrhizae from old-growth prairies and cultured the for use in restoration. Through this work, I found that inoculation with prairie microbes including mycorrhizal can help prairie seedlings and seeded species establish in a restoration. I found that some late successional plant species–those that are most often only found in late successional, remnant and undisturbed prairie communities–will only establish in restorations with the inclusion of their below ground prairie mycorrhizae. I was so impressed with what prairie fungi could do to improve restoration, that I began a small business called MycoBloom so that I can provide these prairie fungi to others.

My current research is sponsored the Kansas Biological Station, the Land Institute, and the Malone Family Land Preservation Foundation. I am working with the perennial plant species that the Land Institute has been conducting research on including Kernza, Silphium, perennial wheat and perennial Sorghum. Some of these plants, Silphium for example, are later successional prairie species. Based on my research in the prairie, these species are likely to be strongly dependent on mycorrhizal fungi. Currently, I am isolating mycorrhizal fungi from prairies in Kansas to inoculate perennial crop species in field and greenhouse studies at the new greenhouse and field stations in Lawrence, Kansas.

Susan Magnoli (she/her)

susan.magnoli@ku.edu

I am a postdoc in the Bever/Schultz Lab broadly interested in evolutionary ecology and plant-microbe interactions, with the goal of better understanding population establishment in novel habitats. My dissertation research focused on rapid adaptation in recently restored plant populations, showing that populations can experience evolutionary changes in phenology and mutualism-related traits in only a few generations after establishment. My postdoc research focuses on the role of rhizobial composition in determining the success of legume species across grasslands of varying land-use histories. By examining legume-rhizobia interactions in this context I hope to determine how this mutualism influences the establishment of both desirable late-successional native legumes and weedy legumes that inhibit restoration success.

Haley Burrill (she/her)

burrill.haley@ku.edu

I came to Kansas during the summer of 2018 after completing my BS in Plant Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz. At UCSC, I was involved in a plant disease ecology lab where I did my undergraduate thesis research. After graduating, I spent a year working in the desert doing invasive species removal in Utah and botany transects in the Nevada’s Spring Mountains. Summer 2020, I completed my master’s work, which explored the response of fungal plant pathogens to plant species richness and phylogenetic relatedness. I decided to stay in the lab for my PhD to build off my master’s research analyzing the response of other microbial communities in the same experiment and exploring pathogen accumulation in both invasive species monocultures and native prairie restorations.

Laura Podzikowski (she/her)

I am broadly interested in how human activities are altering biogeochemical cycling on this planet.  However, to understand our impacts, there are fundamental questions in ecology that remain unanswered. For example, we still don’t have a clear understanding of how biodiversity mechanistically contributes to ecosystem functioning on multiple scales.  This makes it difficult to predict how realistic scenarios of species loss or addition might alter biogeochemical cycles.  For my PhD thesis I am exploring the links between mechanisms maintaining biodiversity in grassland systems and ecosystem function.  This work is part of a large biodiversity manipulation experiment taking place at the KU Field Station.