Jane E. Stewart

Associate Professor of Plant Pathology

Agricultural Biology

Areas of expertise: Fungal Biology and Genetics, forest health, tree pathology, fungal pathogen epidemiology.

Jane Stewart’s research interests include: understanding the biology, ecology and genetics of emerging tree/plant pathogenic fungi using population genetics and genomic methods, studying the interactions of plant and fungi that govern variation in host specialization, pathogenicity, and virulence, and understanding genomic drivers of fungal species delimitation and divergence with a focus on pathogens important to Colorado’s forests, shade and fruit trees, and forests worldwide.

The Stewart lab primarily studies the ecology, biology and genetics of forest pathogens. In relation to BROADN, we are characterizing fungal pathogen movement in association with healthy and diseased forest ecosystems. We are interested in studying the invasive forest pathogen that causes white pine blister rust on 5 needled pine and understand how the movement of fungal spores relates to future disease risk.

The proposed summer REU project will evaluate sites at-risk, to track spore movement, characterize forest stand condition, to better develop models that incorporate long distant aerial dissemination and determine changes in the aerobiome community associated with the spread of spores, and how these relate to disease development.