Dilshini (Dil) Herath Mudiyanselage

Dilshini Thathsarani
  • Graduate student, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
  • Graduate Research Assistant, Sikes Microbial Lab
she/her

Contact Info

9 Takeru Higuchi Hall

Personal Links

Biography —

Previously, Dil worked as a teaching assistant in the Department of Botany at The Open University of Sri Lanka conducting laboratory practical sessions for undergraduates, and as a teaching assistant at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Colombo.

Education —

B.S. in Plant Biotechnology, University of Colombo, 2020, Sri Lanka
Bachelor of Honours

Research —

Dil's current research includes:

  • Designing an experimental set-up to investigate the influence of microbiome changes with plant species richness on root traits by inoculating mesocosms with soils from plots that have been conditioned by one of seven levels of plant community diversity and two rainfall treatments (50% or 150% ambient) over five years, in factorial combinations;
  • Development of a protocol for calculating soil hyphal abundance by modifying the Tennant Equation;
  • Collecting and analyzing hyphal abundance data of a project conducted to investigate root/shoot plant traits variation in monocultures vs. polycultures of the perennial herbaceous species intermediate wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium);
  • Microbiome data analysis in High Performance Cluster in the project “Assessing the Impact of Cropping Systems and Tillage Practices on Microbial Communities of Annual and Perennial Crops: A Comparative Study with Intercropping Analysis.”