Kabir Peay

I study how ecological communities assemble and influence ecosystem processes, focusing on the role of microbial symbioses, which are ubiquitous in plants and animals. My research is driven primarily by intellectual curiosity about the unseen organisms that shape our planet, but is also aimed to provide knowledge that can be used to better manage ecosystem responses to global change, agriculture, and human health.
My lab uses a combination of ecological theory, molecular biology techniques, and field and laboratory experiments to study microbial communities. Our lab works across a large range of systems, both geographically and ecologically. We work on a number of local projects in the SF Bay Area, across North America, and in tropical rainforests of South American and Southeast Asia. We also study a wide range of interactions, from decomposer bacteria and fungi that are key agents of elemental cycling, to pathogenic fungi  and mutualistic fungi. While I am open to working on a variety of systems, a large portion of my work has  focused on root-fungal mutualisms, known  as mycorrhizal symbiosis, because nearly all plants species, including >98% of all trees, use these partnerships to acquire the soil macronutrients that most limit plant growth and ecosystem productivity. While we now know that such microbial mutualisms are common, there has been far less ecological research on mutualisms compared with antagonistic interactions, such as competition and predation. I ask (a) what controls mycorrhizal community assembly across spatial scales, (b) how mycorrhizal symbiosis structures plant communities, and (c) how mycorrhizal symbiosis is linked to ecosystem processes. By integrating these three topics I seek to build a roots-to-biomes understanding of ecological communities and ecosystem function.