Major: Biology
I-Wonder Question: I wonder why Wild Basin looks the way it does? I wonder what is the relationship between microbial communities in soil and the abiotic soil characteristics?
Current Research: Microbial communities provide many critical ecosystem functions to soils, including organic matter decomposition and nutrient cycling. In continuation of a 2 year project investigating the relationship between soil characteristics and the microbial communities at Wild Basin, I am describing the moisture, organic matter content, and the pH of soils at different areas in the wilderness preserve. Microbial communities are being described by their functional diversity on a range of carbon sources, essentially how much the microbes eat different types of food.
With the award of the Hook Fellowship I am going even further in describing soil characteristics and microbial community composition. Concerning soil, I am identifying the ratio of carbon to nitrogen, this will help in understanding decomposition rates. For microorganisms, I am analyzing the differences in the sequences of ribosomal 16s RNA. The 16srRNA sequence is used because it is highly conserved, so it does not change much over time, so it is an efficient way of differentiating microorganisms from each other without having to culture them all.
Future Plans: I am going for a masters and eventual PhD in microbiology with the goal of conducting microbial ecology research. Currently, I am preparing for the GRE and researching labs conduction research that interest me. As for the near future, I am presenting my data at the 2017 Environmental Society of America conference in Portland, OR.