My research aims to elaborate on how soils form a basis for environmental sustainability. For farming, the living things in soil, like and ants and microbes, are important for making soil more fertile, and thereby increasing plant growth. Fertile soils have more nutrients in the form of dead organic matter (mostly feces), which gives soils more granular (or crumbling) structure, and also support more soil biodiversity. For soil microbes, a more structured habitat makes notable differences in who lives where, and which species are more likely to co-exist with each other. I’m interested in how soil structure shapes patterns of its biodiversity. The broader field of ecology proposes some hypotheses—like animals helping microbes migrate around, competitors having separate areas to thrive, and surprising indirect interactions among 3 or more species living together—I aim to expand on how these ideas apply to the soil world, in contexts that have received less attention historically, like tropical and urban systems, to highlight the detail of new examples.

Mathematical modeling
Models of even just a few species can show complicated interactions. In this way, modeling can keep humans humble about our understanding of nature, while helping us explore otherwise hidden processes. I’ve used used computer simulations of classic competition, and ones of paired oscillators (e.g. populations or pendulums) to observe how small-scale interactions produce patterns for entire communities of species.

Laboratory sciences
I’m currently using environmental sequencing methods to observe patterns of microbial diversity among soil aggregate sizes. After extracting DNA from soils, I’m amplifying fungal and bacterial subsets using primers designed for the ITS and 16s v4 regions of the fungal and bacterial ribosomes (respectively). Other types of insights have also come from observing simplified soil communities in the lab, using well-known and specific soil microbes, which might also be good justifications for follow-up modeling.

Population sciences
My data comes from different coffee farms in the neo-tropics, and am finding more to work with in the Detroit area, aiming to keep the contexts of my research that are slightly more flexible, like focal plant or pest species, best targeted to small-farmer interests, which may be different than the interests of the broader, larger agricultural economy/sector.