The Department of Biology is excited to invite you to a seminar entitled "Integrating mutualisms into the ecology and evolution of defense" by Dr. Corlett Wood, Assistant Professor of Biology at University of Pennsylvania  on Monday, October 5th at 3pm in BL234. We kindly ask you to make every effort to attend.

Host: Dr. Alison Gould

More information about the speaker here: https://www.the-wood-lab.com

Abstract: Nearly all plants and animals form mutualistic partnerships with beneficial microbes. However, these mutualisms don’t take place in a vacuum. Hosts are simultaneously attacked by enemies like parasites, pathogens, predators, and herbivores. My lab studies the ecology and evolution of conflict between mutualisms and defense against natural enemies. We use the mutualism between legumes in the genus Medicago and nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria as our model system. In my talk, I will share two stories from my lab’s research on conflict between the rhizobia mutualism and defense against natural enemies. First, tested how rhizobia affect resistance and tolerance to root-knot nematodes (a widespread crop parasite), as well as how this nematode impacts the formation and benefit of the rhizobia mutualism. Our research shows that genetic variation within rhizobia populations is an important determinant of the outcome of rhizobia-nematode interactions on host plants. Second, we recently discovered that rhizobia affect how natural selection acts on a widespread antiherbivore defense (leaf hairs called trichomes). Our work implicates beneficial microbes as major mediators of the host’s response to infection and attack.