People — The Pringle Lab

Meet the PI

Dr. Elizabeth G. Pringle

My research focuses on the ecology of multispecies mutualisms. I am interested in how plant chemistry mediates plant-animal-microbe mutualisms, and in how changes in plant chemistry affect ecosystems. I also study how human-mediated disturbances, like climate change, defaunation, and invasive species, affect ecological communities. As a professor, my goal is to help young scientists find their passion in research and develop the skills they need to succeed. Outside of research, I like to explore the American West with my family and read memoirs by scientists, politicians, and parents.

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Beth's science story

Current lab members

Featured

Patrick Milligan

Postdoctoral Fellow

pmilligan@unr.edu

Pat is an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Pringle Lab studying how East African ant-trees (Acacia drepanolobium) make photosynthetic and epigenetic adjustments to different species of ant protectors and how those adjustments may be inherited by offspring saplings. Before his fellowship, he received his PhD from University of Florida where he studied how A. drepanolobium growth and carbon fixation are influenced by both native ants and by invasive ants that wipe out native mutualistic ants in the tree canopy. His foremost research goal is to understand how the loss of insect diversity in the tropics affects terrestrial carbon cycles and contributes indirectly to atmospheric carbon increase.

Stephanie Coronado

PhD Candidate

scoronado@nevada.unr.edu

Stephanie (she/her or they/them) is studying the impacts of mutualism on community assembly and diversity. In ant-plant mutualisms, ants defend the plant against herbivores in exchange for shelter and plant-derived sugars. Yet, strikingly, despite the presence of aggressive ants, tropical ant-plants often host diverse communities of caterpillars. Stephanie is investigating the differential impacts of ant defense on specialist and generalist caterpillar species and how variation in ant-defense at the tree, forest, and landscape-scale may facilitate caterpillar species coexistence. She utilizes two study systems: the mutualism between the tropical tree Cordia alliodora and Azteca pittieri ants in Chamela, Jalisco, Mexico, and the mutualism between Cecropia spp. and Azteca spp. throughout Guanacaste, Costa Rica.

Anson Call

PhD Candidate

ansonc@nevada.unr.edu

Anson is studying mutualisms' effects on plant and animal interaction networks, with a particular focus on herbivory. Anson uses the alfalfa-rhizobia (Medicago sativa-Sinorhizobioum meliloti) and aphid-endosymbiont mutualisms (Aphididae-Buchnera) to understand how mutualisms modify the trophic relationship between plant and herbivore, and how these effects propagate throughout the wider plant and animal community. Before joining the Pringle lab, Anson earned Bachelor's and Master's degrees at Brigham Young University, where his research focused on plant herbivore and pathogen defense in aspen (Populus tremuloides) forests.

Gabby Mizell

PhD Candidate

gmizell@nevada.unr.edu

Gabby is studying how an invasive ant impacts the carbon allocation in an East African ant-plant (Acacia drepanolobium), and how this affects ecosystem level C cycling. More broadly, she is interested in the impact of invasive species across different scales, including individual organism, population, and ecosystem level effects. Before joining the Pringle lab, Gabby received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida, where she studied ontogenetic variation in the costs and benefits of an ant-plant mutualism.

Gino Zamboni

Master’s student

gzamboni@nevada.unr.edu

Gino is studying how to create an AI image detection model that can identify showy (Asclepias speciosa) and narrowleaf (Asclepias fascicularis) milkweed from images for use by government land-management agencies, such as the Nevada Department of Transportation. Hopefully the model can also be adapted to a wide range of plants for future research opportunities. His primary research interests are in the use of artificial intelligence for landscape-scale plant identification, and how maternal effects influence plant response to drought. Before joining the Pringle lab, Gino received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, where he studied lipid flippase function in Arabidopsis thaliana.