In this episode, Dr. Liz Bowman describes the importance of fungi in the lives of plants. We focus particularly on the invasive plant - Buffelgrass - and how fungal communities differ between populations in their native (African) and non-Native (Texas & Arizona) ranges. Surprisingly, fungus plays a very important role in the lives of plants! Listen in to hear about differences among these communities and our discussion of her recent paper titled "Invasive Buffelgrass, Cenchrus ciliaris, Balances Opportunistic Acquisition of Foliar fungi With Host and Environmental Filtering in Its Introduced Range" published in the peer-reviewed journal Molecular Ecology. You can click on this link to read the paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/mec.17609

Dr. Bowman received her Bachelor of Science in Botany from Oregon State University before going on to her Master of Science and Ph.D. in plant pathology at the University of Arizona. She is currently a research associate in the Department of Integrated Biology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is stationed at the Brackenridge Field Station. She has 10 peer-reviewed publications and focuses her work on plant-fungal associations. She also has a new blog that you should follow! It can be found here: https://sustainablesymbioses.substack.com/

You can also follow her work on Instagram @liz_bowman_fungi

*Special note/correction: The pathogen that causes Sudden Oak Death, an oomycete which is a Stramenopile, is more virulent on red oak than white oak.