While most people walk around oblivious to what's happening in the dirt under their shoes, Ph.D. student Anne Katula is fascinated by the microscopic drama playing out there.
In the lab of Michelle Afkhami, an associate professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences, Katula studies arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), which are underground microbes that team up with plants. It sounds simple: plants give the fungi carbon; fungi give the plants nutrients. But Katula has discovered that the relationship is much more complex.
"They're so strange, and they break so many rules, and they push the boundaries of how we think about biology and ecology," she said about the fungi.
With funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, Katula is comparing microbial interactions involving AMF across extreme climates, from Alaska's permafrost to Florida's scrub ecosystems.
Miami provides a unique research environment with both urbanized areas and pristine ecosystems like the Everglades and mangrove forests. This allows Katula to compare undisturbed habitats with areas affected by human development.
For fieldwork, she travels to sites like the Archbold Biological Field Station about 140 miles northwest of Miami, using a tool called soil cores to extract samples that preserve the soil's spatial structure. Back in the lab, she extracts DNA to reveal the microbial communities within.
Katula's academic journey began as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College, where her love for nature led her to theoretical ecology. "I always loved being outside and hiking and exploring the natural world," she said.
Her current research stems from undergraduate research she completed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, which studies permafrost microbes and climate change.
Most surprising to Katula has been how her work has fundamentally changed her understanding of evolution through multi-level selection theory: the idea that natural selection operates simultaneously on individuals, groups, and genes.
"I didn't think that at this developed of a point in my brain space, I could reshape the entire way I think about evolution," she said.
This research has also shifted her focus toward conservation applications. "Theory is great and all, but sometimes it's nice to see how it can directly apply and benefit our real systems that we live in and interact with every day," she explained.
