Mycology

Spinach Downy Mildew Biofungicide Trials

Full analysis is here Published in Plant Disease Management Reports 2014, 2015, and 2016. Throughout my PhD work, it became obvious that the challenges of spinach downy mildew were most heavily impacting organic growers. They were unable to rely on conventional synthetic pesticides that were able to suitably control disease in the conventional crop, and had to rely on resistance to control the disease. I wanted to see if any biofungicide had effect on the disease.

Climate Change Book Chapter

I was part of an upcoming book chapter on the threat of climate change for pathogens, and all I could think of was the idea of pathogens on the horizon. I painted a watercolor illustration for the book chapter, maybe it’ll be used as the book cover! The painting draws inspiration from Outrun/vaporwave sort of art that became popular in the late 2010’s, although the color palette is wayyyy off, it should be neon blue and pink!

Amanita Birthday Card Painting

I’m lucky to have some great sisters, so I drew an Amanita and painted it with watercolors and a sharpie pen as a birthday card for her!

Grape Powdery Mildew Variety Trials

Full analysis is here Published in Plant Disease Management Reports 2011, and 2012. During my master’s degree, we set out a lot of projects (I had originally intended for my master’s to be a PhD…but thats a story for another time). So I ended up having a ton of different interconnected projects running with Doug Gubler looking at different aspects of grape powdery mildew biology and epidemiology. While we knew that there were differences in how grape varieties and cultivars reacted to powdery mildew, we couldn’t find a great resource that looked at the cultivars grown in California in the present.

Summary measures of predictive power associated with logistic regression models of disease risk

For an ordinary least squares regression model, the coefficient of determination R2 describes the proportion (or percentage) of variance of the response variable explained by the model, and is a widely-accepted summary measure of predictive power. A …

Network analysis: a systems framework to address grand challenges in plant pathology

Plant pathology must address a number of challenges, most of which are characterized by complexity. Network analysis offers useful tools for addressing complex systems and an opportunity for synthesis within plant pathology and between it and …

Multiple origins of downy mildews and mitonuclear discordance within the paraphyletic genus Phytophthora

Phylogenetic relationships between thirteen species of downy mildew and 103 species of *Phytophthora* (plant-pathogenic oomycetes) were investigated with two nuclear and four mitochondrial loci, using several likelihood-based approaches. Three …

A framework for optimizing phytosanitary thresholds in seed systems

Seedborne pathogens and pests limit production in many agricultural systems. Quarantine programs help reduce the introduction of exotic pathogens into a country, but few regulations directly apply to reducing the re-introduction and spread of …

Temperature and light effects on germination of Peronospora effusa sporangia

Spinach downy mildew, caused by the biotrophic oomycete *Peronospora effusa*, is an economically important disease that is found in all spinach growing regions of the US. To effectively predict disease risk we need to understand the response of *P. …

Laurel wilt in natural and agricultural ecosystems: understanding the drivers and scales of complex pathosystems

Laurel wilt kills members of the Lauraceae plant family in the southeastern United States. It is caused by *Raffaelea lauricola* T.C. Harr., Fraedrich and Aghayeva, a nutritional fungal symbiont of an invasive Asian ambrosia beetle, *Xyleborus …