Welcome to the Zanne Lab
Our research group focuses on interactions among plants, microbes and insects, and how they affect carbon cycling under current and future projected climates. To explore these questions, we also study ecological, evolutionary, and biogeographic determinants of species distributions by measuring physiological, morphological, and anatomical functional traits. We explore ecosystem-level consequences of differences in species and trait distributions, for instance, traits of plants, microbes and insects that most affect rates and forms of C release with feedback to the earth system.
We ask these biogeochemical and macroevolutionary questions at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY.
For the 2024 North hemisphere summer, the Zanne Lab has many projects underway all over the map. Amy is attending various meetings the USA, Brazil and Chile, as she builds up projects in the Brazilian Cerrado, Chilean fjords and Patagonia and Antarctica. She is also putting on her New Phytologist Editor’s hat, joining both the next generation scientists and plant-fungal invasions meetings. She will be shifting lab headquarters up to Cary Institute this summer.
Abbey (5th year PhD student) completed her fieldwork in Queensland, Australia and is avidly analyzing data and writing papers on internal stem damage of trees and termite mound carbon dioxide and methane fluxes. She was recently awarded NSF GRFP INTERN funding to spend 6 months based with ArborMeta, learning the fundamentals of LiDAR in forest research.
Yuri (3rd year PhD student) is conducting his second fieldwork campaign in the Brazilian Cerrado. Yuri is sampling lots of termites, plants and soils from the ground and air to understand how murundus (earthmounds) alter the ecosystem. He recently passed his qualifying exams and is working on his dissertation proposal and his first chapter on termite surveys from the Cerrado.
Baptiste (Postdoc) is coordinating several global literature compilation and experimental data collection studies on termite mound properties. He’s also rapidly writing up projects on Australian wood decay. He will join Amy and Yuri in Brazil for the New Phytologist plant-fungal invasions meeting and tour the Cerrado. He will be shifting his base back to Australia this summer.
If you are interested in joining the team please head to our vacancies page for more information. Thank you to the talented Donna Davis for designing the new Zanne Lab logo!
News
29. June - 3. July 2025Amy and Paulo gave talks at ATBC 2025 - Oaxaca, Mexico. Amy talked about the contribution of Cerrado wetlands to global soil carbon dynamics, and in another talk, about the future of functional ecology to ecosystem function integration. Paulo talked about the impact of spatial scale on mapping Cerrado wetlands.
9. May 2025Baptiste, Amy and coauthor's paper on termite recovery in rainforests was recently highlighted in Cosmos Magazine. Many rainforest and termite pictures to admire!
31. March 2025Come see Abbey defend her Ph.D. on 4 April at the University of Miami Shalala Student Center at 12:20 PM!
10. March 2025Amy joined the In Defense of Plants podcast in the Episode 516-Plants in the Afterlife to discuss the fate of wood and the crucial role of decomposers. Check this out!
14. February 2025The AREES review on wood decay published by Baptiste, Amy, and coauthors was recently highlighted in Knowable Magazine. Check out the link for some beautiful visuals and a nice summary of the work.
18. December 2024The entire lab has been very productive in recent months publishing many papers. Check out the publications page to learn more about our termite, wood decay, wood density and remote sensing research.
16. December 2024The fall semester is finished and we are getting ready for Spring 2025! Happy Holidays Folks!
01. December 2024Members of the Zanne Lab (Paulo, Lari, Abbey, Baptiste) have been presenting their research at multiple research conferences all over the globe (America, Brazil, Australia, Spain). It is very exciting to see everyone sharing their research findings with scientists across many countries and fields!
07. July 2024Amy has officially started her new position as a Senior Scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Congrats!