Hang Zhao

I am interested in exploring how global change affects the relationship between plants and soil microbes. My PhD research will mainly focus on how do spatial-temporal variation in root-microbial interactions help understand plant performance under climate extremes. More specifically, I aim to discover 1) how do climate extremes affect root-microbial interactions and their spatial and temporal variability? 2) how do aboveground traits relate to spatial and temporal variations in root-microbial interactions under climate extremes? 3) how do plant adaptation correlate with variable rhizosphere microbial adaptation across rooting depth and season? Achieving these objectives will advance our understanding of plant-microbial relationships and their consequences on plant fitness in a world with an increasing frequency of climate extremes.

Publications

Zhao, H, Zhu, W, Qu, M, Wang, J, Shao, S, Lei, X, Li, J (2024) Inter- and intraspecific stomatal morphological traits vary in response to topographic habitat changes. Journal of Vegetation Science, 35(3): e13266. http://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.13266

Zhao, H, Zhang, F, Wang, Y, Wang, J, Li, J, Zhang, Z (2023) Variation and drivers of soil fungal and functional groups among different forest types in warm temperate secondary forest. Global Ecology and Conservation, 45: e02523. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2023.e02523