University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Recent graduate Dr. Tory Hendry begins a postdoctoral fellowship in July 2012 with Dr. David Baltrus, an assistant professor in The School of Plant Sciences at the University of Arizona. Baltrus’ lab works on the evolution of host range in Pseudomonas syringae, a bacterial plant pathogen. “I'll be using comparative genomic analyses to look at how P. syringae evolves to different plant species,” said Hendry. “I am also interested in investigating the role of insects in dispersing P. syringae between plants.

“Pseudomonas is a fairly important plant pathogen, so understanding how it travels around is useful for agriculture. Understanding how pathogens adapt to new hosts is also important for the study of emerging diseases. Both of these points are especially true now, when increased globalization has the potential to move pathogens around more and climate change is predicted to expand the natural geographic ranges of many plant and insect species.” Hendry's advisor was Professor Paul Dunlap.