Skip to content

Fungi and soil microbe dynamics in elevated CO2

Project team: Jason Hoeksma (University of Mississippi), Nicole Hynson (University of Hawaii), Jenny Bhatnagar (Boston University), Eddie Brzostek (West Virginia University), Jeffrey Lackmann (University of Hawaii), Joris Carbonare (University of Mississippi), Asha Thapa ( (Boston University), Jansen Nipko (Western Sydney University), David Ellsworth (Western Sydney University), Yolima Carillo (Western Sydney University), Catriona MacDonald (Western Sydney University), Jonathan Plett (Western Sydney University), Paul Rymer (Western Sydney University), Jeff Powell (Western Sydney University), Adam Frew (Western Sydney University) and lab members

Project period: 2025 – ongoing

You can find contacts to the Western Sydney University members of the project here

Summary

The objective of the project is to understand the roles of fungi and other soil microbes in understory vegetation dynamics and in system responses to elevated CO2 and P fertilizatioin. 

Using samples collected at EucFACe in May 2025, we are analyzing soil, root, and leaf microbial composition from three C3 and three C4 understory plant species, along with soil biogeochemistry, PLFA, and soil respiration.

Our key findings so far: we see elevated soil respiration and altered soil fungal composition under elevated CO2, and key ectomycorrhizal fungal genera are associated with elevated respiration. P-fertilization alters AMF and pathogen composition, and appears to shift plant dynamics from being P-limited to being pathogen-limited.

Publications

Ongoing. One manuscript is nearly ready for submission (led by Jeffrey Lackmann).

Forums

You are welcome to take part in discussions about the research topic below. To start click a desired topic below. To prevent spam we ask you to create an account. You do this by clicking a topic and then hit the Login button. Then an option to create an account will appear. 

Note that you might get a message from the University spam filter to allow notifications from the forum first time you use it. For WSU “You have new held emails”. Click Permit. After that it should not be an issue. 

To get notifications when new messages are sent for a particular topic, click Subscribe in the upper right corner when the topic is open.