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.
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‘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’
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CURRENT and RECENT GRANTS
Improving plant resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses via silicon accumulation
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Period: 2020-2026
Industry Partnership Scheme
Are we really heading for ‘insectageddon’? Characterising changes in Eucalypt invertebrate communities under rising CO2
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Period: 2019-2023
Time to prime: using silicon to activate grass resistance under higher CO2
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Period: 2017-2023
ARC Future Fellowship
Down to earth defence: unlocking soil-derived defences for plant protection
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Period: 2017-2021
ARC Discovery
Using silicon to augment direct and indirect anti-herbivore defences in cereals.
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Period: 2016-2017
Industry Partnership Scheme
Exploiting soil microbe associations with sugarcane roots for resistance to canegrubs
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Period: 2014-2017
Industry Partnership Scheme
Get tough, get toxic or get a bodyguard: how root herbivores shape grass defences
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Period: 2015-2018
ARC Discovery
Improving plant resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses via silicon accumulation
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Period: 2013-2016
