John Davison recently attended the 1^st International Conference on Community Ecology in Budapest (28-29 September). There he gave a talk describing recent work our group has carried out investigating arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on islands worldwide.

In September, Uppsala was the venue for two consecutive conferences, the 3rd Symposium on Ecological Networks and the 3rd Symposium on Molecular Analysis of Trophic Interactions. Our lab was represented by two members, senior researcher Maarja Öpik and her PhD student Siim-Kaarel Sepp, who presented a poster on his molecular analyses of AM fungal - plant interaction networks. Big thanks to the organisers, who managed to pull off a week-long event with topics ranging from hardcore theoretical ecology to identifying fish gut contents.

We are happy to announce that a new PhD student is joining our group. Daniela Leon Velandia studied and finished her Master thesis on microbiology in Colombia. Then, she decided to venture into plant mycorrhizal ecology in Estonia! She will work on the effect of land use in mycorrhizal trait composition of plant communities along large environmental gradients, under the supervision of Martin Zobel, Mari Mora and Guillermo Bueno. Welcome to Tartu!!