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Professor Alastair H Fitter
CBE,FRS

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)

StatusNameProject
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
Professor Alastair H Fitter

Contact details

Alastair H Fitter
Professor
Department of Biology (Area 2)
University of York
Heslington
York
YO10 5DD

Tel: 01904 328549

http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/biol/staff/ahf2.htm