Below are examples of my writing. There are several different types of communication pieces available to download, as well as an excerpt from a news article I wrote on a recent scientific publication. You will also find one of my eNewsletter issues created for the Michigan Vernal Pools Partnership embedded below.
Written Communications
A Fruitful Affair: How plant-fungi relationships affect diversity
By Emma Kull
Though literature on that very subject abounds, studies to date are all leaving out one key ingredient: fungi. Fungi species have a special relationship with a chosen plant partner in which the host plant provides the fungus with carbon, while the fungus increases the plant’s nutrient absorption capabilities. Known as mycorrhizae, this symbiotic resource exchange between plant and fungus is thought to have major consequences regarding plant diversity, yet quantitative research to support this theory is lacking. A study by Jiang and
associates (Jiang, Moore, Priyadarshi, & Classen, 2017) sheds new light on this previously uninvestigated hypothesis.
When an ecosystem is home to many different plant species, it is more resilient to change or sudden disaster than it would be without species variety. Consider the Irish Potato Famine— historical evidence that disaster strikes when we rely on only one crop species to get the job done. Similar consequences are observed in wild plant communities that become monopolized by one species. This monopolization occurs when plants competing for resources cannot keep up with one particular species. It is clear that understanding how plants can coexist in a community is important, and this requires studying the underlying processes that determine such coexistence.