Plants are incredibly diverse, and so are botanists! In its mission to spread fascinating stories about the plant world, Botany One also introduces you to the scientists behind these great stories.
Today we have Dr. Adriana Corrales, a forest ecologist and Lead Field Research Scientist & Underground Explorers Program Director at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN). Her research focuses on the ecology and taxonomy of tropical ectomycorrhizal associations, and shifts in fungi community composition caused by biotic and abiotic factors. I am especially interested in ectomycorrhizal fungi in tropical montane forests. You can follow her work at Bluesky.
Adriana Corrales with fungi samples in the field. Photo by Andrés Pacheco.
What made you become interested in plants?
I did a science fair project in high school about alkaloids and the chemicals in plants that won first place, and I thought it was so cool that I could research plants like that; at the same time, I had a little nursery at home and really like planting tree seeds, I felt this was something fun to do, I loved watching the little plants grow. Then, in my freshman year at college, I got super, super into taxonomy. I just wanted to know what everything was and be able to identify the plants I saw. Later on in college I became super interested in fungi, and then I found mycorrhizae – and it just felt like the perfect thing for me because I got to study fungi and plants simultaneously.
What motivated you to pursue your current area of research?
I went to school to be a forest engineer, but I didn’t learn anything about mushrooms or fungi in my program. However, I had the opportunity to do my undergraduate thesis about the macrofungi associated with oak forests in Colombia, and it was the first time I started learning about fungi. That was kind of my first opening to these weird systems that were tropical monodominant forests. At that moment I didn’t even know that these systems were so rare! I didn’t know that ectomycorrhizal fungi were special in tropical ecosystems: I was just studying the mushrooms.I just tried to identify the mushrooms, and associate them with their spore morphologies.
Later on, during my PhD, is when I really connected all the dots and realized that these systems were so special for forming this different type of mycorrhizae and that all those beautiful mushrooms I was identifying were symbiotic. That just blew my mind. I knew that’s exactly what I wanted to research. And when Jim Dalling, who was my PhD advisor, told me about these monodominant systems in Panama I just thought, “This is my thing. I have to study this.”
What is your favourite part of your work related to plants?
Studying plant mycorrhizal associations has been really interesting for me because I feel like I speak the plant language and the fungi language, and that really helps me put that together. When you put that already intricate interaction in a soil type or in a particular environment, it becomes a very complex system where you need to really understand many different moving pieces. That’s my favorite part: putting that puzzle together of how these things happen under changing conditions.
Are there any specific plants or species that have intrigued or inspired your research? If so, what are they and why?
This is an easy question. My first obsession was Quercus. That was the subject of my undergraduate thesis. Then, I moved to Oreomunnea mexicana, which was the subject of my PhD dissertation and is another tropical ectomycorrhizal species in Central America. My new obsession is the black oak, Trigonobalanus excelsa, which is also an ectomycorrhizal tropical species that forms monodominant forest. The black oak is super interesting ecologically, and they have really captivated me for the last five years.
Could you share an experience or anecdote from your work that has marked your career and reaffirmed your fascination with plants?
I had a small miracle happen recently with the Trigonobalanus project. We have a grant to try to reproduce these trees. We promised we were gonna deliver 200 seedlings. Nobody has ever been able to reproduce this plant. Six months into the project, the species’ first ever recorded masting event happened. This is an endangered species, so getting seeds is hard. The mast allowed us to get tons of seeds all at once. We didn’t know how to reproduce them at first. We tried to germinate them for eight months, and finally, we got massive germination. It was so exciting to see that happen.
The Black Oak Team. Photo by Whitney Bauck.
What advice would you give young scientists considering a career in plant biology?
I think that’s very important to keep an open mind and remember that plants are not alone. Plants interact with so many other organisms that are fundamental for their survival. That’s a discussion that is so important to have right now for plant conservation and to move forward the science of plant biology.
What do people usually get wrong about plants?
This is what I always tell people: if you see a plant, you have to think of fungi. The microbiome of plants is made up of many fungi, and those fungi are necessary for the plant to survive. Most people don’t really think about it so much. I think that we should view associated fungi as the extended phenotype of plants. We can keep going with this line of thinking, too. There are tons of endobacteria in fungi that change many traits of the fungi as well. There’s just always more than what you can see.
Corrales during fieldwork. Photo by Andrés Pacheco.
Carlos A. Ordóñez-Parra
Carlos (he/him) is a Colombian seed ecologist currently doing his PhD at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) and working as a Science Editor at Botany One and a Communications Officer at the International Society for Seed Science. You can follow him on Bluesky at @caordonezparra.
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