Researcher
James Hutton Institute
alison.bennett@hutton.ac.uk
2014 Cruciblist

Dr Alison Bennett, from the James Hutton Institute, was part of our 2014 cohort of Scottish Crucibilists, and presented her research at the Inaugural Scottish Crucible Forum. Alison and her Crucible team were awarded funding through the Scottish Crucible Interdisciplinary Project Fund for the project ‘Fungal hyphal networks for bioengineered soil’. The team included colleagues from the University of Glasgow, Heriot-Watt University and the James Hutton Institute.

Alison’s Research Interests

Alison’s current research focuses on two areas.

What are the evolutionary pressures on the plant-arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungalmutualism? Using a wide variety of systems (agriculture, invaded natural habitats, etc.), Alison is exploring how changes in the plant-AM fungal interaction result in evolutionary responses in both plants and fungi. This work currently consists of examinations of changes in response to AM fungi by invasive species, examinations of selected crop species for loss of association with AM fungi, and selection for “cheater” AM fungi.
What is the role of AM fungi in multi-species interactions? Alison is continuing to explore the role of AM fungi in plant-herbivore interactions, and extending this research to look at below-ground herbivores and parasitoids. Interested in multi-species interactions? Check out their EU group on Plant-Microbe-Insect Interactions

Past research

Broadly, Alison’s research in plant biology has addressed fundamental ecological questions such as how mutualisms are maintained, why invasive species are successful, and howmutualisms influence the evolutionary ecology of communities in a system (the plant-arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal mutualism) that is important for all natural systems, agriculture, restoration, and conservation.

Despite their ubiquitous nature (AM fungi are found in every natural habitat as well as agricultural systems), we currently know little about the ecology or evolution of this interaction. Using a combination of field, greenhouse, and molecular techniques, my unique research approach has addressed mutualisms in a community context: the community of AM fungi, the community of mutualists (plants and AM fungi), mutualistswithin communities, and the role of mutualisms in ecosystems.

To this end, Alison has explored the ecological and evolutionary responses within the AM fungal community to determine the nature of the plant-fungal interaction and the evolutionary pressures that can dissolve the mutualism; used simple and complex plant-interaction chains to examine how the presence or absence of a species alters simple communities, and how those changes feed back to alter evolutionary trajectories of interactions; and utilised long term experiments to understand the role of the AM fungal and whole soil community in structuring plant responses to global change.

In addition, because theory is such an important driving force for understanding systems in ecology, Alison also collaborates with mathematicians to better understand the structure of AM fungal-plant systems.