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Dear all,</div>
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<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Please join us in </span><span style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);"><b><u><a href="https://map.arizona.edu/107" id="OWAd6ac311d-b8c4-d923-f8da-498a966b2a1b" class="OWAAutoLink" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">Marley 230</a></u></b></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
<b>at 4:00 PM</b> <b>today </b>for a seminar by Dr. József Geml, HUN-REN-EKKE Lendület Environmental Microbiome Research Group, Hungarian Research Network and Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, Eger, Hungary. Dr. Betsy Arnold will serve as the host.</span></div>
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<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Zoom link: </span><span style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);"><u><a href="https://arizona.zoom.us/j/84253432688" id="OWAb3c66961-e6f3-bb3b-3635-5186418c1155" class="OWAAutoLink" style="color: rgb(5, 99, 193);">https://arizona.zoom.us/j/84253432688</a></u></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">
(password: <b>SPLS2025</b>).</span></div>
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Refreshments will be provided in the Marley Lobby at 3:30 PM.</div>
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<b>Title: Compositional dynamics of soil fungal communities along environmental and disturbance gradients in temperate and tropical forests</b></div>
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<b>Abstract</b>: Soil microbial communities represent the greatest reservoir of biological diversity, with thousands of microbial species found a single gram of soil. Soil and plant-associated fungi (e.g., root symbionts, decomposers, mutualistic endophytes,
and pathogens) have key roles in nutrient cycling and water and nutrient acquisition by plants, and they shape plant resistance and resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses. It is crucial to understand how climatic and edaphic factors influence the structure
and functioning of forest fungal communities, because forests are major reservoirs of biodiversity, provide crucial ecosystem services, and play important roles in biogeochemical cycling and climate regulation. In this talk, I will give an overview of several
projects on the compositional dynamics of soil fungal communities along environmental and disturbance gradients as well as secondary forest succession in temperate and tropical forests. Our studies show that, similar to plants, temperature, soil pH, and soil
moisture are the main drivers shaping the diversity and distribution of soil fungi at regional and landscape scales. Overall, compositional turnover in fungal communities is driven by niche-based environmental filtering due to contrasting habitat preferences
among fungal species in all functional and taxonomic groups. For functional groups dependent on symbioses with plants (especially ectomycorrhizal fungi), the distribution of host plants drives richness and community composition, resulting in important differences
along topographic gradients and among biogeographic regions. The compositional and functional turnover along temperature and moisture gradients implies that many soil fungi are sensitive to environmental changes, including climate change and disturbance, and
are well-suited for monitoring purposes as indicators of environmental conditions.</div>
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<b>Bio</b>: Dr. József Geml is a Hungarian microbial ecologist professor, who studies spatial and temporal dynamics of fungal communities and their relations to environmental factors, disturbance, vegetation, and plant physiology. He earned two Ph.D.s, one
in Plant Pathology at the Pennsylvania State University and another in Mycology at the Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary. He worked for five years at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, and as a faculty member at
Leiden University and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands for ten years, before returning to Hungary to form his Environmental Microbiome Research Group at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has twenty years of experience in soil and plant
microbiome research in several biomes and continents, e.g., in the arctic tundra and in boreal, temperate, and tropical forest ecosystems, resulting in over 100 publications. He is currently a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Arizona, hosted
by Prof. A. Elizabeth Arnold, with whom he studies the compositional and functional dynamics of symbiotic fungi associated with oaks along gradients of climate stressors in Arizona.</div>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt;">===============================================================<br>
</span><span style="font-family: "Vladimir Script"; font-size: 20pt;"><b>Zhongguo Xiong</b></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt;"> <br>
School of Plant Sciences BIO5 Institute<br>
BIO5 Email: </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; color: blue;"><a href="mailto:zxiong@arizona.edu" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">zxiong@arizona.edu</a></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt;">
<br>
Phone: (520)-621-9869<br>
Forbes 303, P.O. box 210036 Fax: (520)-621-7186<br>
University of Arizona <br>
Tucson, AZ 85721-0036 </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt; color: blue;"><a href="http://ag.arizona.edu/~zxiong" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">http://ag.arizona.edu/~zxiong</a></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New"; font-size: 10pt;"><br>
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