Scott Johnson
COMMUNITY ECOLOGY
PLANT RESILIENCE
RESEARCH OVERVIEW
Our research looks to identify novel approaches for managing pest species and preserving ecosystem services, based on a better understanding of how organisms within ecosystems interact. This includes exploiting plant defences such as silicon, chemical signals used by insects to locate resources, enhancing biological control and using plant-microbes to help plants resist herbivore attack.
‘By characterising multi-trophic interactions, particularly in response to global change, we identify vulnerabilities in ecosystems, but more crucially where resilience and the opportunities for adaptation lie’
CURRENT and RECENT GRANTS
Improving plant resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses via silicon accumulation
Period: 2020-2026
Industry Partnership Scheme
Are we really heading for ‘insectageddon’? Characterising changes in Eucalypt invertebrate communities under rising CO2
Period: 2019-2023
Time to prime: using silicon to activate grass resistance under higher CO2
Period: 2017-2023
ARC Future Fellowship
Down to earth defence: unlocking soil-derived defences for plant protection
Period: 2017-2021
ARC Discovery
Using silicon to augment direct and indirect anti-herbivore defences in cereals.
Period: 2016-2017
Industry Partnership Scheme
Exploiting soil microbe associations with sugarcane roots for resistance to canegrubs
Period: 2014-2017
Industry Partnership Scheme
Get tough, get toxic or get a bodyguard: how root herbivores shape grass defences
Period: 2015-2018
ARC Discovery
Improving plant resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses via silicon accumulation
Period: 2013-2016
