Justine Karst 🇨🇦

‘Our striking results demonstrate …’: Persuasion and the growth of academic hype Academics today are working in a time of intense pressure in research publishing, with greater expectations, more explicit incentives and fiercer comp…

This article shows an increase in hype in sci literature
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

'Mycorrhizas are the most important symbiosis in the world!' 👇

Can you please share the studies that support this post? Thanks

🚨 Early Career Researcher Travel Award! 🚨

Open to grad students & postdocs presenting at #ICOM2026
@ICOM2026

Apply now!

All info👉 url-shortener.me/6QQF

🗓️ Deadline: Nov 14, 2025
📢 Decisions: Jan 30, 2026

We are pleased to announce this new ECR award generously supported by @newphyt.bsky.social Foundation for travel to ICOM2026. Details 👇

Welcome to the 9th International Symposium on Physiological Processes in Roots of Woody Plants. Join leading researchers, students, and professionals in Como, Italy to explore how woody roots contribute to sustainability, soil health, and plant production across diverse ecosystems. The images shows the logo, conference titel and venue 2-5 June 2026 in Como, Italy

🚨SAVE the DATE🚨 "9th International 🧪 Symposium on 🍁Woody Root Research" 3-5 June 2026, Como, Italy. www.uninsubria.eu/woody-roots-ix ... Sessions: #root #ecology, #mycorrhizal dynamics, #belowground #technologies, #agroforestry applications, & #globalchange, ... SIGNUP for NEWSLETTER: bit.ly/4mXU6Nt

How do tree seedlings respond to multiple climate stressors?🌴

📖Our meta-analysis shows that CO₂ boosts growth, but only if drought isn't present. The combination of CO₂, drought and temperature mainly had additive effects🌳

🔎Read more: buff.ly/agUryqs

Sabine Hossenfelder Asks If Science Is Dying. It’s Not. Physics is dying. It’s mathematical fiction. Science is failing. Most of academic research that your taxes pay for is almost certainly bullshit. I don’t trust scientists. Would you believe me if I tol...

Great piece by @jonathanjarry.bsky.social on the descent of Sabine Hossenfelder, from science communicator to contrarian outrage-monger www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

This study doesn't seem to strengthen the hypothesis that mycorrhizal fungi helped plants colonize land. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty around this point. However, I'm the first to admit that I'm not trained in these kinds of analyses, so please straighten me out!

I'm puzzled by '1/3'. Assuming myc fungi can't select C from fossil fuels but receive C in proportion to magnitude of sources, wouldn't the value be < 2%? Screenshot of my calculations below. Thanks for helping me sort this out.

Il est encore temps de s'inscrire aux Journées Centre SÈVE!

‼️Date limite : 6 octobre 2025

🗓️ 20-21 novembre 2025

📍 Hôtel Chéribourg, Orford

✨ Nos conférencier-ères invité-es: Pre Justine Karst @j-karst.bsky.social (@ualberta.bsky.social) et Pr Frank Sainsbury (@griffith.edu.au)

Meet Plenary speakers of @icom2026.bsky.social

Prof. Marc-André Selosse - from Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris) - will be opening the session "Moving forward while looking into the past: How the evolutionary history of mycorrhizas informs future adaptation pathways" #ICOM2026

Grateful to all IMS members who joined our 1st Annual Meeting! 🙌
We shared key advances from this past year, ICOM info & more.
Huge thanks to our members. For those who could not attend we will share the meeting video. TIP: Check your spam inbox!

#Mycorrhiza #IMS

The pitfalls of rDNA‐based AMF identification: a comparative analysis of rDNA and protein‐coding genes Intragenomic polymorphism of rDNA in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) has been largely overlooked in ecological and taxonomic studies, and the reliability of nuclear rDNA regions for species ident.....

Most of us use rDNA for community analyses of AM fungi. Intragenomic variation in rDNA of AM fungi can be pretty huge, depending on the region.

nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🍄Working in fungal conservation? Call for papers for our upcoming special issue in Fungal Ecology 'Fungal conservation: from knowledge to actions' ! Deadline 31 January 2026 www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

Please share with your big picture colleagues.
Join us @umontreal.ca as an Assistant Professor of Global Change Biology.
rh-carriere-dmz-eng.synchro.umontreal.ca/psc/rhprpr9_...

Lab group: Justine Karst, Jacob Beauregard, Alexandra Hallin Carlsson, Ferf Brownoff, Kyle Taylor. Missing Liam Easton.

2025 Lab group photo. Small but mighty!

Old forests, new fires, and a scientific standoff over active management This is the second installment of Mongabay’s coverage of active management tools for forest fires. Read Part 1. Photographs of forests in the western U.S. from the mid-1800s show a starkly different r...

This is well researched. But I bristle at the idea of this as a “scientific standoff.” A hallmark of science is that there are almost always contrary paradigms challenging the dominant one. But you have to know when the weight of evidence is on different planets.

news.mongabay.com/2025/08/old-...

Thank you!

Can you please post information on another platform, too? (I am not on LinkedIn)—thank you!

Fun fact: Nicole hand-textured soils from the 80 field sites, and was wrong only once!

Thanks to Sasha Hararuk with NRCan Canadian Forest Service
and my dept colleague Sylvie Quideau for all their help. Thanks ‪@friresearch.bsky.social‬ for funding.

We found that soil carbon stores in disturbed forests were resistant, and mycorrhizal shifts did not substantially alter long-term soil carbon dynamics. Lots of caveats in Discussion.

Given the distinct effects EM and AM fungi have on nutrient and C cycling, we thought shifts in mycorrhizal dominance post-disturbance would coincide with changes in soil C. Nicole surveyed soils and vegetation in 80 lodgepole pine-dominated sites; half disturbed 12–16 years ago and half intact.

Mountain pine beetles have killed many trees in western boreal forests of Canada. In some areas, ectomycorrhizal pine stands have been replaced by arbuscular mycorrhizal vegetation.

Over a Decade Later, Soil Carbon Stores in Boreal Forests are Resistant to Extensive Tree Mortality - Ecosystems Mountain pine beetles have caused extensive tree mortality in Canadian boreal forests. In some areas, ectomycorrhizal (EM) pine stands have been replaced by arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) vegetation. Giv...

New research led by Nicole Lau, past MSc in my group: ‘Over a decade later, soil C stores are resistant to extensive tree mortality’
🧵
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Canada Post features fungi and lichen in new stamp series Canada Post has unveiled its new stamp collection Wednesday featuring fungi and lichens found in the country.

Canada Post features fungi and lichen in new stamp series - Canada Post has unveiled its new stamp collection Wednesday featuring fungi and lichens found in the country.

Call for symposia at @ICOM2026 is open until 15 October.
The 13 conference of @mycorrhiza_ims #Mycorrhiza will take place in Cairns, Australia, 12-17 July 2026!
@southmycorrhiza @karst_justine @fmartin1954 @1pantunes #soil #fungi

icom2026.org/symposia/

Thrilled to announce that the special issue on fungal #conservation that @cfemycolab.bsky.social and I are co-editing for the @britmycolsoc.org.uk c.org.uk journal Fungal Ecology is open for submissions!
www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

Where the Falcon Flies-by Adam Shoalts

Who canoes/hikes +3000 km to find a bird nest in the Canadian Arctic? Adam Shoalts does. Though I’m sure he was ready to go home, I didn’t want the adventure to end. What an amazing guy. What beautiful and ecologically important landscapes we have.

Not-so-mutually beneficial coral symbiosis The partnership between corals and their intracellular algal symbionts has long been a textbook example of mutually beneficial association. In this essay, Mikhail Matz argues for an updated view in wh...

Interesting to see how metaphors are used to nudge understanding of a topic in new directions. The language in this article is super-charged with metaphors!

‘Not-so-mutually beneficial coral symbiosis’

www.cell.com/current-biol...