Research

Scoring introducted microbes for their interaction with plant hosts in a network system [picture from Toju et al. (2020)] We are living in a world full of microbes. These tiny critters affect all aspects of our life. One of the holy grails in the microbiology field is to construct a... [Read More]

100 million years ago, a group of bark beetles started to farm their fungal symbionts and formed a tight relationship with the fungal crops. Such lifeform between bark beetles and their fungi is termed ambrosia symbiosis, and therefore “ambrosia” beetles and “ambrosia” fungi for these critters involved. [Read More]

Most bark beetles are associated with hundreds, if not thousands, of microbes during their life, often with a few dominant taxa at a time. One of the fungal genus Geosmithia, is globally very diverse and abundant, and dominantes a ubiquitous but under studied niche — the twig-infesting / phloem-feeding bark... [Read More]