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 and in the Department of Biology at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL.
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
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!
06. July 2024Amy has received an NSFDEB-NERC grant to investigate spatial and temporal tradeoffs in CO2 and CH4 emissions in tropical wetlands. The project involves collaborators from Brazil, US and UK, and we look forward to seeing their cool discoveries from Chapada dos Veadeiros, Brazil!
05. July 2024Amy has received an AccelNet-Implementation Phase 1 grant to support MICROBENet-Net, a Multi-Institute Collaborative Research on BElowground plant-microbial interactions Network of Networks. MICROBENet-Net is recruiting researchers around the globe interested in networking on plant-microbe interactions. Learn more here, and fill out our interest survey here to get involved!