Underground Explorers

This project explores fungal diversity across microbial mats and surrounding vegetation in the Cuatro Ciénegas Basin, Mexico, an extreme, phosphorus-limited ecosystem that provides a modern analogue of ancient environments. We will compare fungi from microbial mats with those associated with grasses growing within, near, and away from the pools. Using DNA-based community profiling, we will investigate how fungal communities change across this aquatic-to-terrestrial gradient and test whether microbial mats harbor early-diverging fungal lineages related to modern mycorrhizal fungi. Because mycorrhizal-related fungi in microbial mats remain largely unexplored, this project may provide new insights into the evolutionary origins of plant–fungal associations while establishing an important fungal biodiversity baseline for this threatened desert oasis.