Zoe Cardon

Senior Scientist

Zoe Cardon
Contact Information
Education
Ph.D., Biological Sciences, Stanford University, 1994
B.S. Biology, B.A. Spanish, Utah State University, 1988
MBL Affiliation
Ecosystems Center
Research Area
Ecosystems
Global Change
Imaging
Microbiomes
Lab Website
Cardon Lab

Zoe Cardon is a Senior Scientist in The Ecosystems Center at the MBL. As an ecosystems ecologist with roots in mechanistic plant physiology, she explores how plants contribute to ecosystem function both above- and belowground, particularly in partnership with microbes and soils in the “rhizosphere.” Dr. Cardon received her PhD from Stanford University, was a DOE Global Change Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley, and after a short stint as Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College, she became Assistant then Associate Professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Dept. at University of Connecticut. At UConn, she was a founding member, Associate Director, and Graduate Program Director of the interdisciplinary, cross-departmental Center for Integrative Geosciences. In 2002-2003, she was named Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Fellow in Conservation Biology at Harvard. Cardon’s work is interdisciplinary and collaborative, and since arriving at MBL in 2008, she contributed to the launch of the National Microbiome Initiative by the White House OSTP, served as an elected member of the Governing Board of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), and she was named a Fellow of ESA in 2018 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2021. 

Links:

Micro-Eco Discussion Group Schedule

News and Research Highlights
Zoe Cardon works with
Anne Giblin Headshot
Anne Giblin
Senior Scientist and Director, The Ecosystems Center
Ecosystems Center
Emil Ruff
Emil Ruff
Associate Scientist
Ecosystems Center
Keiluweit
Marco Keiluweit
Assistant Professor
UMass Amherst
Malmstrom
Carolyn Malmstrom
Professor
Michigan State University
Bezanilla
Magdalena Bezanilla
Professor
Dartmouth College
William Riley
William J Riley
Senior Scientist
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Teri O'Meara
Teri O'Meara
R&D Associate Staff Scientist
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Benjamin Sulman
Benjamin Sulman
R&D Associate Staff Scientist
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
no headshot
Jotham Austin II
Director, Advanced Electron Microscopy Facility
University of Chicago
Selected Publications

Pérez Castro S, Peredo EL, Mason O, Vineis J, Bowen J, Mortazavi B, Ganesh A, Ruff SE, Paul B, Giblin AE, Cardon ZG. Diversity at single nucleotide to pangenome scales among sulfur cycling bacteria in salt marshes. AEM. Accepted.

Rand DM, Nunez JCB, Williams S, Rongl S, Burley JT, Neil KB, Spierer AN, McKerrow W, Johnson DS, Fayton TJ, Skvir N, Ferranti DA, Greenhill M, Lyons A, Okami N, Morgan DM, Raynes Y, Kinney K, Brown BRP, Giblin AE, Cardon ZG. (2023) Parasite manipulation of host phenotypes inferred from transcriptional analyses in a trematode-amphipod system. Molecular Ecology 32:5028–5041. DOI: 10.1111/mec.17093

Arredondo M, Fang Y, Jones M, Yabusaki SB, Cardon ZG, Keiluweit, M. (2023) Resolving dynamic mineral-organic interactions in the rhizosphere by combining in-situ microsensors with plant-soil reactive transport modeling. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 184:109097. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2023.109097

Li H, Bölscher T, Winnick M, Tfaily MM, Cardon ZG, and Keiluweit M. (2021) Simple plant and microbial exudates destabilize mineral-associated organic matter via multiple pathways.  Environmental Science and Technology 55(5): 3389–3398 doi: 10.1021/acs.est.0c04592

Peredo EL and Cardon ZG (2020) Shared up-regulation and contrasting down-regulation of gene expression distinguish desiccation-tolerant from intolerant green algae. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 117 (29) 17438-17445. doi:10.1073/pnas.1906904117

Cardon ZG, Peredo EL, Dohnalkova AC, Gershone HL, Bezanilla M. (2018) A model suite of green algae within the Scenedesmaceae for investigating contrasting desiccation tolerance and morphology. Journal of Cell Science 131: jcs212233 doi: 10.1242/jcs.212233

Fu C, Wang G, Bible K, Goulden ML, Saleska SR, Scott RL, Cardon ZG. (2018) Hydraulic redistribution affects modeled carbon cycling via soil microbial activity and suppressed fire. Global Change Biology.24(8):3472-3485. doi: 10.1111/gcb.14164

Graves CJ, Makrides E, Schmidt V, Giblin A, Cardon ZG, Rand D. (2016) Functional responses of salt marsh microbial communities to long-term nutrient enrichment. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 82:2862-2871. doi: 10.1128/AEM.03990-15

Blaser MJ, Cardon ZG, Cho MK, Dangl JL, Donohue TJ, Green JL, Knight R, Maxon ME, Northen TR, Pollard KS, Brodie EL. (2016) Towards a predictive understanding of Earth's microbiomes to address 21st Century challenges. mBio. 7:e00714-16. doi: 10.1128/mBio.00714-16

Thomas F, Giblin AE, Cardon ZG, Sievert SM. (2014) Rhizosphere heterogeneity shapes abundance and activity of sulfur-oxidizing bacteria in vegetated salt marsh sediments. Frontiers in Microbiology 5:309 doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2014.00309. 

Cardon ZG, Stark JM, Herron PM, Rasmussen JA. (2013) Sagebrush carrying out hydraulic lift enhances surface soil nitrogen cycling and nitrogen uptake into inflorescences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 110(47):18988-18993. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1311314110

Neumann, RB and ZG Cardon (2012). Tansley Review: The magnitude of hydraulic redistribution by plant roots: a review and synthesis of empirical and modeling studies. New Phytologist 194:337-352. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2012.04088.x

Cardon,Z.G. and Gage, D.J. (2006) Resource exchange in the rhizosphere – molecular tools and the microbial perspective. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 37: 459-88. doi: 10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.37.091305.110207

Patent: Scalable, large-area optical sensing platform with compact light delivery and imaging system. Patent number: US 11,035,794 B2. Date of Patent: June 15, 2021. Inventors: Xufeng Zhang, Supratik Guha, Zoe G. Cardon