| Field of Study: | Evolutionary ecology, quantitative genetics, and genomics |
| Title: | Associate Professor |
| Degrees: | Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley |
| Homepage: | Homepage/Lab Web Site Link |
| Google Scholar: |  Google Scholar |
| Office: | 230J |
| Email: | stephanie.porter@wsu.edu |
| Phone: | (360) 546-9478 |
| Fax: | |
| Mailing Address: | School of Biological Sciences Washington State University PO Box 644236 Pullman,WA 99164-4236 |
Our lab combines evolutionary ecology, quantitative genetics, and genomics to study mutualisms and environmental adaptation. Understanding how symbiotic partners co-evolve and adapt to different environments is ecologically and agriculturally important. For example, this will help us explain how cooperation is maintained in the symbiosis between plants and rhizobium bacteria, which is responsible for half of all current biologically fixed terrestrial nitrogen. In this symbiosis, host plants trade photosynthetically derived carbon for nitrogen fixed by endosymbiotic rhizobium bacteria housed in root nodules.