Dr. Amy Heim

Postdoc [January 2025 - December 2026]

I am a plant Community ecologist fascinated by plants in surviving harsh environments. My postdoc in the Laforest-Lapointe lab involves looking at the moss microbiome (Bryosphere) in the Arctic and Antarctic. Specifically, we are interested in understanding how climate change could impact moss-microbe associated ecosystem processes.

Between July 2025 and March 2026, we collected 155 Arctic moss samples (Sites: Greenland, Canada, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands) and 80 Antarctic moss samples (Sites: Antarctic peninsula, South Georgia, Falkland Islands). I had the pleasure to accompany a National Geographic scientific cruise in February-March of 2026 in Antarctica.

Now that our data has been collected and processed, we are examining patterns associated with bacterial containing the nifH gene (nitrogen fixation gene) and collection location.

I am a NSERC Banting Fellow.