Field and lab photos ****Check out our photos from lab social events (where the real work happens) here****
2024
Caitlin extracts DNA from DIGME samples via the Kingfisher High-Throughput DNA Extraction Protocol. You can see the color differences of soils from around the world in the supernatant!
2023
Holly accepts 2023 College of Natural Science Support Staff Award!
Purdue DroughtNet site, Holly and Caitlin sampled rainout and ambient shelters here for DIGME
Brandon presents his work on diazatroph biodiversity at the GLBRC All Hands Conference in Lake Geneva, WI.
Mellssa attends AGU in San Francisco, CA and shares her insights from participating in the KBS Research Experience for Teachets (RET) program.
2022
REU Sofie spent lots of time with her soybean plants in the greenhouse
Sofie presents at the KBS Undergrad Symposium, posing with mentor, Jennifer
Caitlin helps RET Melissa deploy soybean litter decomposition bags for her 2 year project
Madaris presents her work on drought effects on plant growth at the REX All Hands meeting at KBS.
Soil Sieving for REX. A hoot and a holler!
Tayler's Diggin' into Soil Heath workshop for farmers and agriculture advisors
2021
Summer 2021: Summer was full of field sampling and science! Undergrad students presented their posters at the Undergrad Symposium a great return to in person science!
2020
2020 has been quite a wild year! To do our part to help "flatten the curve" or coronavirus spread, the Evans lab has been working from home whenever possible. We've devised creative solutions to life outside the lab!
December: Here comes Dr. Heather! Heather got to share her dissertation work around the country with her virtual defense seminar. Those in the area helped her celebrate with a socially distanced Polar Plunge on Gull Lake. All sorts of dreams coming true!
Heather presents all her hard work over the years in her seminar. Over 90 participants!
This fall the greenhouse was Tayler's second home. She's been working hard on a collaboration with the Kravchenko lab looking at how plant interactions influence root exudates & rhizosphere communities via rhizoboxes. She's then using soils from that project in a huge plant soil feedback experiment here at KBS.
Tayler is collecting root exudates to study how they are used to interact with other plants and soil microbes.
Look at those Roots! One of Tayler's 140 Rhizoboxes!
Lots of feedback! Tayler's caring for over 500 pots in her plant soil feedback experiment this winter.
Holly and Emily help Corinn sieve LTER soil samples at home while keeping spaced apart. Science can happen in your own backyard!
Holly built a homemade glove box to keep a clean environment while root picking at home.
Everyone had to adjust to new "lab members" coming into work. Some of them were more interested in petting that sample processing.
2019
October and November: Evans lab celebrates art and science! Corinn presented her piece Worlds within Worlds at the MSU SciComm Science-Art Exhibit. Using petri dishes and beads, Corinn shows the diverse visual display of microbes cultured in the lab.
KBS held it's first Allurement Salon this November which invited KBSers and community members got to learn more about science and research at KBS through art projects inspired by researchers work. Heather made giant petri dishes using microbes from lab members hands, Tayler used switchgrass roots and beads to represent her work on plant microbe interactions and root exudates and Corinn made block prints inspired by the new LTER prairie strip experiment.
Corinn's creation: Worlds within Worlds
Tayler with her work at the Allurement Salon.
Are we human or are we microbe? The Evans lab petri dishes, cultured by Heather.
Corinn and her prints at the Allurement Salon.
Sarah, Corinn, Robert, Jennifer, Heather and Tayler pose with their petri dishes.
August: Esbeiry Cordova, 2018 Evans lab REU and ESA SEEDS fellow, presented her research on grass litter decomposition by fungi from various niches at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting. She was also an invited panelist at the ESA Diversity Luncheon where she talked about her decision to become an ecologist. Her mentor, Evans lab grad student Robert Logan, was able to tag along and support Esbeiry!
April: Kisanet Gebresilase (left) and Shanna Hilborn (right), Evan's lab undergrad research assistants from summer 2018, present their summer research at Michigan State's University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum. They presented findings about how switchgrass root traits and rhizosphere communities' carbon use change during drought
2017
April: KBS represents at the Kalamazoo Science March
April: Sarah and Robert head to Cary Institute for a collaboration meeting. We arrived with some extra time, so decided to drive from Westchester airport to Cary on the scenic route so we could check out the mighty hudson! Not a bad place for lunch.
January: Heather visits Masiello and Silberg labs at Rice University to learn (among other things) how to use a gas reporter biosensor in soils. Here are some ACTION SHOTS:
2016
MMPRNT field season: April - October, 2015, Michigan and Wisconsin see more photos from MMPRNT's first full field season at www.rhizosphere.msu.edu
Namib Desert field trip: June 2016. Robert had some amazing photos on this trip! see Robert's photo page
2015
Hepsiba working in the lab and presenting her poster at the KBS REU/URA symposium, summer 2015
Marginal land field sampling trip, Michigan, July 2015
Sampling at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center's Marginal Land Experiment (3 sites in Michigan). Field trip with Will West, Sarah Evans, Jeff Norman, and Maren Friesen, July 2015. Clockwise from top left: Sarah enjoys a pastie by the northern side of Lake Michigan in the Upper Penninsula, field sites, sampling, switchgrass plots at Lux Arbor Reserve.
2014
April 2015: Sampling grasses in Iowa to examine desiccation resistance of litter microbes
Above: Sampling at Conard Environmental Research Area in Iowa, Spring 2015, which included some prairie frolicking. Lower right: collaborators Peter Jacobson, Mary Seely, Kathy Jacobson, and Sarah Evans.
November, 2014: Namib Desert sampling
Namib Desert sampling and FOGLIFE meeting. Clockwise from top left: dune excursion morning, sampling S. sabulicola in the Far East site, Gobabeb "station dune" taken from gravel plains, and FOGNET weather station