Beginning this summer Wall lab member and GSBI Executive Director Elizabeth Bach will join the Nature Conservancy as Ecosystem Restoration Scientist at Nachusa Grasslands in Franklin Grove, Illinois. During the past 2 years, Elizabeth not only had a substantial impact on the GSBI, but also contributed substantially to Wall lab’s research. Her vast knowledge of US grassland […]

On May 8, Ashley Shaw presented her PhD thesis on “Trophic relationships in soil communities: How abiotic stress affects biotic interactions in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica”. Ashley has been in the Wall lab since 2011, first as a MSc student, then as a PhD student and graduate research assistant. The research she presented casts

Many congratulations to our undergraduate research assistant Abby Jackson for the successful presentation of her Honors Thesis to her committee and the public on April 25th. Her research “Water availability effects on the vertical distribution of nematode trophic groups in soil” showed how changes in growing-season precipitation will affect the distribution of nematode populations through the soil profile

The Wall lab congratulates Diana’s election to the National Academy of Sciences, the latest recognition to a long and distinguished career in scientific research. A well-deserved award for a soil ecologist who has made tremendous contribution both to advancing scientific knowledge, and to communicating the importance and value of living soils beyond academia – even

Wall lab postdocs Andre Franco and Walter Andriuzzi, with the help of students Abby Jackson and Diana Granados, had a successful day of field work in the short-grass steppe site of our ongoing grassland project. In this project, an NSF-funded collaboration with Osvaldo Sala’s lab at Arizona State University, we seek to find out how variability in

The Wall lab celebrates the recognition of Diana’s terrific soil ecology career by the Ecological Society of America, which announced that she will receive its highest honor, the 2017 Eminent Ecologist Award, at the society’s annual meeting in Portland, OR, August 2017. The award honors a senior ecologist for an outstanding body of ecological work or sustained ecological

Wall lab’s intern Eden Senay presented the results of her study on host suitability for an endoparasitic soil nematode during the poster session of the 2017 Front Range Student Ecology Symposium. Her experiment showed that the so-called root lesion nematode, P. penetrans, infects dominant grass species in the arid shortgrass and moist tallgrass prairies. Eden, a sophomore in high

The Wall lab is once again in Antarctica for the austral summer field season. Professor Diana Wall, postdoc Walter Andriuzzi, and PhD student Ashley Shaw, together with colleagues from Dartmouth College, Virginia Tech and Brigham Young University, are currently in the McMurdo station, East Antarctica, the largest human facility on the continent. More details on

A video by Brigham Young University professor Byron Adams, co-PI of the MCM LTER soils team led by Diana Wall, highlights some of the most exciting research topics pursued by Adams, Wall and colleagues in the remote Antarctic Dry Valley ecosystems. Several Wall lab members appear in the video, whose Antarctic scenes were shot by Dr. Adams during last

The journal Nature published a news feature on Diana Wall and her quest to shed light on soil biodiversity and raise awareness of its importance to human well-being. The article summarizes Diana’s career, from her pivotal work on plant-parasitic nematodes, to her Antarctic research, and her leading role in the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative.