Georgiana May

Organismal interactions importantly structure ecological communities but we know little of how those interactions evolve. My research focuses on the evolution of interactions among microbes, especially fungi, and between fungi and their plant hosts. Specifically, we are interested in how the interactions among fungi living within a host plant affects the evolution of virulence in plant pathogens, and the maintenance of considerable diversity in symbiotic interactions between fungi and plants. We use interdisciplinary approaches to answer these questions; genetic, genomic, metabolite and gene expression, assessment of the fitness consequences, and modeling. I began my faculty position at U. Minnesota in 1991 following a NIH funded postdoctoral research position at U. North Carolina, and a Ph.D. from U. C., Berkeley in 1987.