Research

Research interests

  • Microbial ecology 🦠
  • Soils and plants 🌾
  • Genomics 🧬
  • Data science 💻

Academic Research

PhD: Measuring in-situ bacterial growth/death to understand soil carbon cycling

Watch my exit seminar here (or below)!

For my PhD research in the Buckley lab at Cornell, I measured in-situ bacterial growth and death in soils for individual taxa. Bacterial growth is closely tied with metabolism, which drives organic matter decomposition and, by extension, the soil carbon (C) cycle. Dead microbes make up up to 80% of persistent C in most soils, so we were also interested in death. I used this data to predict microbial traits from growth and death patterns and to explore how microbial community dynamics impact C cycling in soils.

MS: Impacts of agricultural management on rhizosphere microbial communities

Marsden fieldsite.

I did my MS at Iowa State University co-advised between the Halverson and Hofmockel labs. There, I took advantage of the Marsden long-term rotation site (see left) to investigate how agricultural management effects maize root-associated microbial communities, with a particular emphasis on taxa important for nitrogen cycling.


Internships at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

I interned at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Dr. Vanessa Bailey’s lab each summer during my undergraduate years. I learned the basics of experimental design, research conduct, and various methods commonly used in microbial ecology thanks to Sarah Fansler, lab manager extraordinaire. I worked on various projects, including comparing bacterial and fungal respiration in agricultural soils, developing a DNA extraction technique for individual soil aggregates, and the effect of gradual warming on soil community exo-metabolite production.

Select Publications

Google Scholar

  1. Wattenburger, C.J. and Buckley, D.H., 2023. Land use alters bacterial growth dynamics in soil. Environmental Microbiology 25: 3239–3254. doi:10.1111/1462-2920.16514

  2. Foxx AJ, Franco Meléndez KP, Hariharan J, Kozik AJ, Wattenburger CJ, Godoy-Vitorino F, Rivers AR, 2021. Advancing Equity and Inclusion in Microbiome Research and Training. mSystems 0:e01151-21.

  3. Wattenburger CJ, Gutknecht J, Zhang Q, Brutnell T, Hofmockel K, Halverson L, 2020. The rhizosphere and cropping system, but not arbuscular mycorrhizae, affect ammonia oxidizing archaea and bacteria abundances in two agricultural soils. Applied Soil Ecology 151, 103540. doi:10.1016/j.apsoil.2020.103540

  4. Wattenburger CJ, Halverson LJ, Hofmockel KS, 2019. Agricultural Management Affects Root-Associated Microbiome Recruitment Over Maize Development. Phytobiomes Journal 3, 260–272. doi:10.1094/PBIOMES-03-19-0016-R