I am a Lecturer in Mycorrhizal Ecology and an ARC DECRA Fellow at the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University. I’m interested in the ecology of AM fungi, what drives community assembly, and how this relates to plant outcomes, particularly defence.
My current fellowship explores how agricultural management shapes mycorrhizal fungal diversity and how community composition impacts plant defences. As part of this I’m also collecting data to establish a comprehensive Australian database mapping AM fungal communities within agro-ecosystems.
I obtained my PhD from the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment in 2017, where I studied the impacts of the AM fungi and soil silicon on plant defences to insect herbivores. I was then awarded an independent research fellowship at Charles Sturt University where I continued to pursue my interests in belowground ecology by exploring aspects of how arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi affect plant performance and responses to herbivory.
After this fellowship I took up an ongoing faculty position at the University of Southern Queensland, but then in 2022 I returned to the Hawkesbury Institute in the Environment as one of the leading centres of mycorrhizal research in Australia.
