Aho lab

Jessica Call (MS Candidate, FA 2021-)

Troy Tetreault (MS Candidate, FA 2020-)

My thesis research concerns the pollination ecology of the high alpine meadows of the Beartooth Plateau, north of Yellowstone National Park. My research framework is a combination of controlled experiments and observational data collection. With my controlled experiments, I am quantifying the dependence of dominant/characteristic alpine plant species on particular pollinators through the use of a novel exclosure design. With my observational study, I am recording metrics regarding the visitation rates and identities of insects that pollinate plants, which will be used to infer pollinator network structures and patterns of generalism/specialism.

Before attending ISU, I graduated from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in Ecology and a minor in Botany. During my undergraduate years I was also involved with research in high alpine environments and pollination ecology, specifically in the Adirondack Mountains. I also participated in research on wetland responses to forest fires and the encroachment of trees into a boreal peatland. In my free time I enjoy hiking, trail running, rock climbing, and kayaking.

Thesis publications:

• Tetreault, T., & Aho, K. (2021). An updated insect exclosure design for pollination ecology. Journal of Pollination Ecology, 29, 249-257. (link)

Spencer Roop (co-advised PhD Candidate, FA 2020-)

Aurora Bayless-Edwards (MS, FA 2019)

My MS thesis research focused on classifying plant communities in semi-arid sagebrush steppe on the Snake River Plain. Our classifications involved applications of several hierarchical and non-hierarchical cluster analysis methods evaluated by geometric and non-geometric evaluators to determine optimal community assignments. The goal of the project was a local scale map of plant communities. However, temporal and spatial changes in these communities allowed us to investigate interesting ecological processes in semi-arid communities, such as post-fire succession.

Thesis publications:

• Aho, K. A., Weber, C. F., Christner, B. C., Vinatzer, B. A., Morris, C. E., Joyce, R., Bayless-Edwards, A. L. H. & Schmale III, D. G. (2020). Spatiotemporal patterns of microbial composition and diversity in precipitation. Ecological Monographs, 90(1), e01394. (link)

Stephanie Zorio (DA, FA 2019 )

My DA dissertation focused on plant communities in high-altitude environments and how they change over time, especially due to direct or indirect anthropogenic influence. I was given the opportunity to expand my investigations of alpine plants to include microbial diversity in soil and the near-terrestrial atmosphere via Next-Gen sequencing. I primarily used multivariate statistics and a suite of diversity metrics to detect ecologically meaningful patterns.