Alison Bennett

Broadly, my research in plant biology has addressed fundamental ecological questions such as how mutualisms are maintained, why invasive species are successful, and how mutualisms influence the evolutionary ecology of communities in a system (the plant-arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal mutualism) that is important for all natural systems, agriculture, restoration, and conservation. 

Despite their ubiquitous nature (AM fungi are found in every natural habitat as well as agricultural systems), we currently know little about the ecology or evolution of this interaction. Using a combination of field, greenhouse, and molecular techniques, my unique research approach has addressed mutualisms in a community context: the community of AM fungi, the community of mutualists (plants and AM fungi), mutualists within communities, and the role of mutualisms in ecosystems.

To this end I have explored the ecological and evolutionary responses within the AM fungal community in order to determine the nature of the plant-fungal interaction and the evolutionary pressures that can dissolve the mutualism; used simple and complex plant-interaction chains to examine how the presence or absence of a species alters simple communities, and how those changes feed back to alter evolutionary trajectories of interactions; and utilised long term experiments to understand the role of the AM fungal and whole soil community in structuring plant responses to global change. 

In addition, because theory is such an important driving force for understanding systems in ecology, I have organised large-scale collaborations between soil biologists and mathematicians to better elucidate the mechanisms that drive soil systems.