Gerald Cobián

Research Interests:

• Plant fungal interactions
• Biogeography
• Phylogenetics
• Community assembly

CURE-E Course: Microbial Ecology (BIOL 402), first introduced with CURE-E in Fall 2021

Project Title: Comparison of foliar fungal endophyte and fungal leaf decomposing communities

Microbial Ecology students during the Fall 2021 semester will be working on a research project to compare the fungal communities associated with both green leaves still on the tree and leaves that have naturally fallen from the tree and have started the decomposition process. They will be using culture techniques to isolate fungi from both communities and molecular techniques to aid in the identification of fungal isolates. While this type of work has been done before, student culture isolates and data will be used for later iterations of Microbial Ecology. Therefore, the overarching goal of this course is to determine which leaf fungi are involved in the decomposition of leaves and their roles in the assembly of leaf decay fungal communities. Additionally, fungal isolates will be used for manipulative experiments to investigate fungal-fungal interactions, rates of decomposition, and community ecology theories.