Thin or thick, shallow or deep, long or short: How do soil microbial communities affect root morphology, and the other way around?

Are you a MSc. or BSc. student with a keen interest in experimental plant ecology? Are you fascinated by the (largely unexplored) belowground part of a plant’s environment? Then you might be interested in the following project, which offers you a nice opportunity to further develop your scientific skills as an ecology-oriented biologist in spe, and explore the way plants cope with their dynamic soil biological environment.    

I am a PhD student in the Terrestrial Ecology group of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, studying plant-soil biotic interactions in a large grassland biodiversity experiment in Germany.  In the glasshouse (at the NIOO) We are conducting “plant-soil feedback” experiments, in which we try to unravel the effects of plants on  soil microbial communities and how these effects feed back to plant performance and community dynamics.      

There is growing interest in the way plants exhibit plasticity in their “traits” with respect to changing environmental conditions. “Traits” are sharply defined characteristics of a plant’s physiology, phenology and morphology, and are important tools in plant ecological research. In this student project, we will take a closer look at root traits of different plant species; how they are affected by plant-microbe interactions in the rhizosphere and how they are related with the plant-soil feedback values of individual plants. Why do some plants establish a love relationship with their soil microbe symbionts, while others a hate relationship, and why do even other plants maintain a love-hate type of interaction with the organisms in the rhizosphere? Maybe root traits – the hidden half of plants – can teach us more!

For more information, see my personal page, where you can find a more detailed description of the project.