I’m a Clarendon Scholar in the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Doctoral Training Program (DTP).  I’m supervised by Lindsay Turnbull here in the Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford. My project also has two co-collaborators: Phil Poole (Department of Plant Sciences at Oxford) and Tobias Züst (Institute of Plant Sciences at the University of Bern).

My project is about the interactions between plant roots and soil microbes, and the consequences that these interactions have for plant community composition. We know that plants are selective in the microbes that live in, on, and near their roots. We also know that the relationship between soil microbes and plant roots has consequences for a plant’s ability to grow and produce seeds. With these points in mind, my project will test if plants with better root-microbe interactions can outcompete plants with less favourable root-microbe interactions. I’ll explore this question using a diverse community of Arabidopsis genotypes and soil microbial communities extracted from different bulk soils.

Before coming to Oxford, I completed my Bachelor of Science (BSc) with Honours at the University of Prince Edward Island. I then did a Masters of Science (MSc) in Biology at the University of Montreal. During my Bachelors, I was a three-time recipient the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) undergraduate research award. I was also a Killam Fellow under Fulbright Canada at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina during my BSc. During my MSc I did an internship at the United Nation’s Secretariat for the Convention on Biological Diversity with the scientific and policy support unit. I am from Annandale, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Contact details

Email: Christian.norton@plants.ox.ac.uk

Twitter: @chnorto

Publications

Cuerrier A, Clark C, and Norton CH. 2019. Inuit plant use in the eastern Subarctic: comparative ethnobotany in Kangiqsualujjuaq, Nunavik and Nain, Nunatsiavut. Botany. 97(5): 271-282.

Norton CH and Lacroix CR. 2018. Quantitative developmental analysis of two phenotypes of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis in the context of homeosis. Botany. 96 (6): 345-357.

Ferreira MP, Cuerrier A, Giroux M, and Norton CH. 2018. Insect Consumption in the Arctic. In Edible Insects in Sustainable Food Systems (pp. 19-33). Springer.