People

Dr. L. Jamie Lamit
PI; Assistant Professor, Syracuse University

Jamie is a community ecologist with a love for fungi, plants, and mycorrhizas and wetlands (especially peatlands). He is in this business because he enjoys learning about cool, weird things out in nature, both aboveground and belowground. He also really loves teaching and working with students.

Jamie’s Google Scholar page, CV

Miranda Murray
PhD Candidate, Syracuse University

Miranda is a PhD candidate fascinated by the hidden lives of fungi in wetlands. She studies how environmental factors shape fungal communities, especially mycorrhizal fungi. Wetlands are messy, beautiful systems that punch above their weight in biodiversity and ecosystem function, and she’s drawn to untangling the complexity and spotlighting the organisms oft-overlooked. Her interest in plant-fungal interactions began while she was studying ecology and herbal medicine in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Her curiosity has taken her from mountain fens to the salt marshes and sand plains of coastal New England to the FL Everglades, and now the peatlands of NY. At the heart of her research is a deep appreciation for the hidden connections between plants and fungi and the role they play in sustaining ecosystems and a desire to conserve them.

Danielle Sublett
PhD Student, Syracuse University

Danielle Sublett is studying mycorrhizal communities in wetland ecosystems using stable isotope analysis and spatial modeling. Her research explores how environmental gradients shape ecosystem function and biodiversity. She earned her M.S. in Biology at California State University Fresno, where she studied the evolutionary ecology of ectomycorrhizal fungi surrounding oaks, focusing on Cortinarius species in the Sierra Nevada region. Danielle is passionate about biodiversity conservation and bridging her interests in fungi, forest ecosystems, and ecological modeling to inform habitat management and conservation efforts in response to global change. 

Danny Wehner
MS Student, SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry

Danny is a MS student at SUNY ESF advised by Martin Dovciak and Nathan Kiel. His research is focused on potential constraints on the climate-driven upslope migration of tree species in the northeastern U.S. mountains. In his collaboration with the Lamit lab, he is exploring the ability of understory plant species to serve as sources of AMF inoculum for sugar maple at higher elevations. Danny previously earned a BS in natural resource management from Oregon State University and worked as a restoration ecologist in southern California but missed the forests of the east coast where he grew up.

Liam McPhearson
Undergrad, SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry

Liam did a short internship in our lab in winter 2025 while a student at Onondaga Community College, and came back to participate in the summer 2025 REU program at SU. He is now and undergrad at ESF and has stayed on to work on a project that focuses on the relationship between root order and mycorrhizal colonization in small herbaceous plants of wetland and upland habitats.