Category: Lab News

Huge congrats to Elizabeth, who is raking in the awards with regard to her work on growing restoration plants in recycled glass sand. One award was for a small grant from the Society of Wetland Scientists and the other was for best poster at the Mycological Society of America annual meeting. We are proud of […]

Congratulations to Dr. Peter Tellez who published the final chapter of his PhD dissertation. We’re so proud of you for hanging in there and pushing it to the finish line!  Here it is: Traits along the leaf economic structure associate with communities of foliar endophytic symbionts.   It is also on our Publications page.  Peter in the […]

We are excited about this review in Estuaries and Coasts:   https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12237-022-01052-2 In it, we discuss how information about plant-microbial symbiosis can be used toward coastal restoration. What do we know? What do we need to know? How can we find out? Please read and we welcome feedback! Farrer2022_Article_Plant-MicrobialSymbiosesInCoas

This week we visited Glass Half Full to pick up recycled, ground up glass. We are collaborating with other Tulane researchers to test the ability of plants and their microbes to grow in this substrate. Stay tune for more updates! https://www.nola.com/news/environment/article_137c6300-277a-11ec-998d-ebede0775f47.html    

We are excited to announce the successful, final Ph.D. defense of Dr. Steve Formel. He did an excellent job at his defense of “The influence of salt marsh microbial communities on the foundational species Spartina alterniflora in an oiled environment.” We wish him the best in his new role as Data Scientist at the National […]

We are looking for one or two fabulous masters students to help us out on our baldcypress project. Here’s the full advertisement: MS research opportunity in coastal plant-microbial ecology The Van Bael laboratory in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Tulane University seeks applications from students who are interested in pursuing a one […]

This summer has been an exciting time for baldcypress microbiomes! First we knew nothing and now we know so much more – thanks to the hard work of so many in the Van Bael lab. First let’s talk about  fungi in bald cypress.We found that fungal diversity was the highest at intermediate levels of salinity. […]

Exciting news for Steve Formel, he was selected to do a post-doctoral fellowship with the National Academy of Sciences Gulf Program. He was placed with NOAA and will be working at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. 

We are so proud of Steve for his double win at two separate “Three minute thesis” competitions this month. The first was at Tulane University and the second one drew a more regional crowd at the Coastal Connections event held at University of New Orleans. At each event, Steve won the “People’s Choice” award, with […]

Congrats to Jen Janowsky, a recent graduate of Tulane and the first author of “Bacterial and fungal endophyte communities differ in trees of natural versus wastewater-treatment wetlands,” published today online in Wetlands Ecology and Management. Please click the link here to have a look: https://rdcu.be/bSb4z The pdf is here: Janowsky2019 Coauthors include Liz Kimbrough, Steve Formel, […]