UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Laura Jones and Caylon Yates, doctoral students in Penn State’s intercollegiate graduate degree program in ecology, were recognized as recipients of 2022-23 Alumni Association Dissertation Awards.
The Alumni Association Dissertation Award commemorates students pioneering their field of study, whose dissertations will have a lasting impact on both academia and society.
Both students aim to create more sustainable and environmentally friendly agricultural systems to ensure food security for future generations.
Jones, co-advised by Margarita Lopez-Uribe, associate professor of entomology, and Rudolf Schilder, associate professor of entomology and biology, studies how bee pollinators respond to stressors like climate change and novel infectious diseases, with the goal of mitigating prospective ecological and agricultural concerns.
“Laura’s research has generated pioneering information about the adaptability of pollinators to temperature variation and novel host-parasite interactions,” said Lopez-Uribe.
As a result of Jones’ success, experimental model systems incorporated into her studies can now be generalized across other pollinator species, using squash bees as the framework for examining the effects of biotic and abiotic stressors on pollinating agents. Her findings uncovered novel host-parasite interactions among these bees and subsequently identified previously unknown drivers of parasite transmission in agricultural pollinators.
“Climate change and novel infectious diseases are very real and direct threats for the persistence of many species,” said Jones. “This can be particularly concerning for people when we rely on those species for food production.”
Yates, advised by Terrence Bell, assistant professor of phytobiomes, also works to advance agriculture while protecting and better understanding ecological systems.
“People in agriculture are beginning to move away from the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which can have far-reaching negative effects on the ecosystem,” said Yates. “Instead, they’re turning to microbes as a replacement.”
His research explores the effects of mycorrhizal fungi, which play a crucial role in nourishing plants, on the composition and function of soil microbiomes.
“Caylon has been key to a collaboration with two other labs at Penn State on root-associated microbiomes,” said Bell.
Yates was able to find a gap in widely acknowledged research where studies were unable to generalize findings and frameworks centered around the relative impact of mycorrhizal tree types on soil processes, across individual tree species.
“The problem my work addresses is how do we improve the ability of microbes to live and grow in new environments, rather than immediately die or be out-competed by other microbes,” said Yates. “My work could help develop more effective and functional microbial products.”
After conducting an intense reciprocal transplant experiment with more than 1,000 mesocosms, experimental systems that simulate natural environments on a smaller scale, Yates found the effects of mycorrhizal fungi to be highly variable at the level of individual tree species. He has since developed new microcosm systems that allow him to test the direct impact of mycorrhizal fungi on different microbiomes and soil types.
For more information on their research, watch the Huck Institutes’ Student Spotlight profiles of Jones and Yates.