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Peter Zee

Associate Professor of Biology

Peter Christopher Zee

Peter Zee studies ecological and evolutionary processes with laboratory experiments with microbial species. He teaches classes in ecology and evolutionary biology.

Research Interests

Dr. Zee is interested in the evolution of species interactions and evolution in multispecies communities.

Biography

Dr. Zee grew up in Santa Barbara, CA and attended UC Santa Cruz. After a year on the East Coast working at Harvard, he moved to Bloomington, IN where he completed his Ph.D. at Indiana University.  After IU, he did a quick stay at ETH Zurich before spending two years as an NSF Postdoc Fellowship at Stanford. Dr. Zee then split his time between Los Angeles and Davis, working as a postdoc with Casey terHorst (Cal State Northridge) and Sebastian Schreiber (UC Davis).

Publications

Zee, P.C. (2018). Evolutionary history of plant hosts and fungal symbionts predicts the strength of mycorrhizal mutualism. Communications Biology

Most plants engage in symbioses with mycorrhizal fungi in soils and net consequences for plants vary widely from mutualism to parasitism. However, we lack a synthetic understanding of the evolutionary and ecological forces driving such variation for this or any other nutritional symbiosis. We used meta-analysis across 646 combinations of plants and fungi to show that evolutionary history explains substantially more variation in plant responses to mycorrhizal fungi than the ecological factors included in this study, such as nutrient fertilization and additional microbes. Evolutionary history also has a different influence on outcomes of ectomycorrhizal versus arbuscular mycorrhizal symbioses; the former are best explained by the multiple evolutionary origins of ectomycorrhizal lifestyle in plants, while the latter are best explained by recent diversification in plants; both are also explained by evolution of specificity between plants and fungi. These results provide the foundation for a synthetic framework to predict the outcomes of nutritional mutualisms.

Zee, P. C. & Fukami, T. (2018). Priority effects are weakened by a short, but not long, history of sympatric evolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

terHorst, C.P, Zee, P.C., Heath, K.D., Miller, T.E., Pastore, A.I., Patel S., Schreiber, S.J., Wade, M.J., & Walsh, M.R. 2018. Evolution in a Community Context: Trait Responses to Multiple Species Interactions. American Naturalist.

Zee, P. C. & Velicer, G.J. (2017) Parallel emergence of negative epistasis across lineages of a social microbe. Evolution.

Zee, P. C., Liu, J., & Velicer, G.J. (2016) Pervasive, yet idiosyncratic, epistatic pleiotropy during adaptation in a behaviorally complex microbe. Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 

Barrett, L.G., Zee, P. C., Bever, J.D., Miller, J.T., & Thrall, P.H. (2016) Evolutionary history shapes patterns of specificity in Acacia-rhizobial mutualisms. Evolution.

Chaudhary, V.B., .. (31 others) .., Zee, P. C., & Hoeksema, J. (2016) The context of mutualism: a global database of plant response to mycorrhizal fungi. Scientific Data.

terHorst, C.P. & Zee, P. C. (2016) Eco-evolutionary dynamics in plant-soil feedbacks. Functional Ecology.

Rendueles, O., Zee, P. C., Dinkelacker, I., Amherd, M., Wielgoss, S., & Velicer, G. J. (2015). Rapid and widespread de novo evolution of kin discrimination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(29), 9076-9081.

Zee, P. C. & Fukami, T. (2015). Complex organism-environment feedbacks buffer species diversity against habitat fragmentation. Ecography, 38(4), 370-379.

Zee, P. C., Mendes-Soares, H.M., Yu, Y-T. N., Kraemer, S.A., Keller, H., Ossowski, S., Schneeberger, K., & Velicer, G.J. (2014). A shift from magnitude to sign epistasis during adaptive evolution of a bacterial social trait. Evolution. 68(9): 2701-2708.

Zee, P. C. & Bever, J.D. (2014). Joint evolution of kin recognition and cooperation in spatially structured rhizobium populations. Plos One 9(4): e95141}.

Drown, D. M., Zee, P. C., Brandvain, Y., & Wade, M. J. (2013). Evolution of transmission mode in obligate symbionts. Evolutionary Ecology Research, 15(1): 43-59.

Platt, T.G., Zee, P.C., Mack, K.M.L. & Bever, J.D. (2012) Microbial Communties in Hastings, A., & Gross, L. J. (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Theoretical Ecology. University of California Press.

smith, j., Van Dyken, J. D., & Zee, P. C. (2010). A generalization of Hamilton’s rule for the evolution of microbial cooperation. Science. 328(5986): 1700-1703.

Wade, M. J., Wilson, D. S., ..(15 others) .. & Zee, P. C. (2010). Multilevel and kin selection in a connected world. Nature. 463(7283), E8-E9.

Courses Taught

Education

Ph.D. Evolution, Ecology, & Behavior, Indiana University-Bloomington (2012)