People

Justine is a mycorrhizal ecologist who does much of her research in the boreal forest. Her interests include mycorrhizal ecology,  disturbance, and how forest ecosystems function. 

She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Ecology and President of the International Mycorrhiza Society.

Ana is interested in restoration ecology and plant-fungal interactions, and particularly keen in the fungal ecology of finding out who is who and what is it doing. Ana completed her BSc in Biology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City and then spent some time as an environmental impact intern. She moved back to her hometown in La Paz, Mexico and participated in some NGOs dedicated to environmental education and natural resource management of the area, and with that in mind, went to the University of Melbourne in Australia to do a MSc in environmental sciences. Ana was supervised by Dr. Cristina Aponte to research mycorrhizal fungi in the context of riparian ecosystem conservation through revegetation.  After that she returned to UNAM to do a research stay at the lab of Dr. Camille Truong where she did field work looking for root-associated fungi in neotropical plants and looked into the fungal communities of an AM plant species and an ECM plant species along a disturbance gradient.

Ferf received a BA in Japanese and East Asian Studies from the University of Alberta in 2013. After living in Hokkaido for a few years and developing a passion for nature, he decided to return to the U of A and completed a BSc in Environmental and Conservation Sciences (Conservation Biology) in 2023. Despite his deep love of insects (particularly the greatest insect ever–the cicada), Ferf started his MSc with the Karst lab in the fall of 2023 but quickly decided to roll his research into a PhD. Ferf is currently investigating how trees acquire water and the role of ectomycorrhizal fungi in that process.

Liam completed his BSc in Biology at Thompson Rivers University before pursuing an MSc in Computational Neuroscience at McGill University. Interested in both forest ecology and biological networks, he joined the Forest Biology program at the University of Alberta for his PhD. His research investigates how fungi coordinate behavior across their mycelial networks, combining techniques from electrophysiology and behavioral ecology.

Laura graduated with a BSc in Environmental Sciences (Conservation Biology) in 2007. She lives on a farm in Sherwood Park with her husband and 2 daughters and runs a horse boarding facility (and keeps rescue chickens!). She has always had a deep love for nature and it took a while for her to decide what to focus on. Laura joined the Karst lab to study whether aspen trees use extrafloral nectaries as preferential sinks for carbon and her MSc research is taking place on some of the farmland she and her husband own in Ardrossan.