Population ecology of plants and fungi

Our research is focused on how plants and fungi respond to a rapidly changing world. We use a combination of field, laboratory, and computational approaches to test the fitness and geographical distributions of plants and fungi. The overall goal of our research is to identify the abiotic and biotic predictors of how plants and fungi respond to ongoing environmental change.

Our fully equipped lab is based at the Department of Biology, University of Naples Federico II, Monte Sant'Angelo Campus. Here we;

• isolate and culture fungi and maintain a living fungal collection.

• perform in vitro germination and early plant development experiments with higher plants, particularly orchids, under different stress conditions. 

• perform simulated climate growth chamber experiments to understand how plants and fungi grow under different climates.

• sequence the DNA and RNA of fungi and plants using Sanger sequencing, ITS metabarcoding, genomic analysis with ddRadseq, and recently, transcriptomic approaches.

Congratulations to PhD student Sara Pasciuto who recently won the prestigious John L. Harper award from the British Ecological Society. This award recognises early career researchers to support their ongoing detailed investigations into plant populations and interactions. This award will help Sara further understand the mechanisms which underlie how mycorrhizal fungi influence the early stages of orchid growth using transcriptomics during orchid germination under different temperature regimes. 

Opportunities

There are often positions for highly motivated BSc and MSc students to work in the lab on fungi and understanding how they interact with plants. If you are interested to find out more about our research, please feel free to read our published papers, or send an email to karljoseph.duffy [at] unina. it.

Recent lab papers

• Orchid mycorrhizal fungi may play a strong role in determining genomic structure and local adaptation in the Mediterranean orchid Orchis italica. From Marco Balducci's PhD thesis, accepted for publication in Annals of Botany.

• The impact climate change has on the distributions and niches of Caladenia orchids in Australia and how ecogeographical isolation of hybrid forming species may increase in the future. From Jacopo Calevo's Marie Sklowdowska Curie Fellowship work, published in Biodiversity and Conservation. 

• Geographical gradients and ecological factors determine the orchid mycorrhizal fungal communities associated with the Mediterranean orchid Orchis italica. From Marco Balducci's PhD thesis, published in Journal of Biogeography.

• Cross pollination increases both seed quality and germination success across a range of European orchid species with Jacopo Calevo and Miriam Bazzicalupo. Published in Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 

Funding

The lab is very grateful to various funding bodies in recent years:

• Compagnia San Paolo and University of Naples Federico II Junior Starting Investigator grant - Programma STAR.

• Italian Ministry of Research project of national interest (PRIN) in collaboration with Mariangela Girlanda (University of Torino) and Giuseppe Pellegrino (University of Reggio-Calabria).

• The doctoral programme of the Department of Biology, University of Naples Federico II.