Symbiotic Relationships with Bacteria and Bugs

Many insects are known to harbor mutualistic bacterial symbionts that play important roles in host nutrition and defense.

Of Ruminants and Rats: Using Stable Isotopes to Probe Physiology

Stable isotopes are non-radioactive forms of elements that share the same number of protons but differ in their number of neutrons. Although chemically identical, isotopes vary in mass, and those mass differences influence how they partition in physical, chemical, and biological systems.

From City Streets to Mountain Peaks: Tracking biodiversity and gene flow of Utah’s wildflower and arthropods

Environmental gradients, such as changes in altitude, temperature, or disturbance, provide natural laboratories to study how life adapts to shifting conditions.

Fitness of Bacterial Plant Pathogens across Environmental Stresses

Plants are constantly exposed to a wide range of microbial pathogens, many of which can cause disease when environmental conditions favor infection.

Temporal Dynamics of Non-structural Carbohydrates (NSCs)

Non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs) are primary metabolites produced during photosynthesis that play crucial roles in plant function.

Transmission Dynamics of Infectious Diseases

In this stream, students will work to understand how transmission dynamics of infectious diseases impact control and elimination efforts; develop and apply mathematical and statistical methods to quantify infectious disease spread; and inform decision support for public health and healthcare response to outbreak.

Revealing Environmental Change Through Lake’s Memory

By working with plant, animal, and fungal collections, you’ll explore how organisms are identified and classified, and how ecological studies are conducted using museum specimens. You’ll also delve into ancient environments by studying lake sediments—nature’s own archives of past ecological conditions.

Exploring Living Dinosaurs

Our research aims at understanding the immense diversity of modern birds, while using this knowledge in applied and interdisciplinary contexts.

Microalgae in the Great Salt Lake

Fungal Symbiosis & Diversity