Professor Alastair H Fitter
CBE,FRS
Visit Professor Alastair H Fitter 's profile on the York Research Database to:
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Profile
Career
| 2010 | Commander of the Order of the British Empire | |
| 2005 | Elected Fellow of the Royal Society | |
| 2004 - 2010 | Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research | University of York |
| 1997 - 2004 | Head of Department | Department of Biology, University of York |
| 1992 - | Professor | Department of Biology, University of York |
| 1988 - 1992 | Senior Lecturer | Department of Biology, University of York |
| 1972 - 1988 | Lecturer | Department of Biology, University of York |
| 1972 | PhD | University of Liverpool |
| 1969 | BA | University of Oxford |
Research
Overview
The lab's work focuses on plant and microbial behaviour in a changing world, including belowground ecology and functional ecology of roots and mycorrhizal symbioses; carbon cycling in soil especially in relation to mycorrhizas; phenological responses to climate change.
Discoveries
Mycorrhizal fungi exhibit great functional diversity with the greatest selection pressures acting on the external mycelium in soil, rather than on the mycelium that interacts with the plant within the root. Consequently, the management and conservation of these key soil microbes requires an understanding of their fundamental ecology.
Projects
- The diversity of natural communities of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: niche or neutral model? (Funding body: NERC)
- Mycorrhizal community dynamics under elevated CO2 (Funding body: BBSRC)
- Ecological Flora Project ( Funding body: BES)
Research group(s)
| Status | Name | Project |
|---|---|---|
| Post doctoral fellow | Alex Dumbrell | Diversity of natural communities of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi |
| Student | Michele Pignataro | Are mycorrhizal communities predictable? |
| Student | Joanna Banasiak | Diversity and host specificity of mycorrhizal communities |
| Student | Anne Cotton | Mycorrhizal community dynamics under elevated CO2 |
