Dr Christina Birnbaum, University of Southern Queensland

It was a balmy Fremantle November evening in 2016 when participants of the inaugural plant-soil ecology symposium gathered for a dinner after yet another successful day at the annual Ecological Society of Australia conference. With the Indian Ocean breeze in the background, the conversations were loud, the beers were cold, and it was just so great to be surrounded by likeminded people. After that night, the idea for a new ESA Plant-Soil Ecology Research Chapter was born. Eleonora (Dr Eleonora Egidi) and I, both postdocs at the time, agreed that it was time that we had our own group of plant-soil ecologists here in Australia that would meet regularly at ESA conferences, organise symposia, promote Australian plant-soil science and foster networking. After all, the British Ecological Society had their plant-soil ecology group, the Ecological Society of America had theirs, it was time we had our own Down Under, too.

Fast forward to six years, a few job changes and a couple of babies later, and between us we have organised seven symposia with more than 70 presentations at ESA annual conferences and a special thematic issue in Plant Ecology on “Applying microbial community research to improve conservation and restoration outcomes” published in 2020. Eleonora and I guest edited the special issue when I was on maternity leave. I still do not fully comprehend how I managed to pull it off in my sleep deprived state of mind and utterly exhausted caring for a toddler. But we did it (somehow), with the power of two!

Our committee has grown, too, from two to four when Anna (Dr Anna Hopkins) and Adam (Dr Adam Frew) joined the steering committee in 2021. The Covid-19 pandemic and the move to Zoom inspired us to find new ways to connect and promote plant-soil science. That is when we started “Meet the Scientist” Twitter e-series to promote mostly up and coming plant-soil ecologists and our monthly e-journal club where we discuss the latest Australian plant-soil science. We have grown to an almost 600 strong online Twitter community (@ausplantsoil) which is something we would have never expected when we founded the research chapter in 2016 – 2017.

In 2022, we are looking forward to reconnecting in real life, finally, in Wollongong at the joint ESA-SCBO joint conference. This year, the plant-soil ecology research chapter organised a symposium entitled “From disconnect to reconnect: integrating soil microbial communities into fundamental ecology, conservation, and restoration” and will explore the extent, complexity and interactions of microbial communities in Australian terrestrial ecosystems. We received a record high number of submissions for the symposium (25!) indicating the increasing number of researchers working in the plant-soil ecology space, which is good news. The bad news is that, unfortunately, we could not include all these contributions as part of the symposium. This gives me an idea that maybe we should consider having our own Research Chapter Annual Conference!

What’s in store for the future, then? Undoubtedly more ESA symposia, more journal clubs, more plant-soil science and hopefully more new members. Eleonora, Adam, Anna and myself are not getting any younger, thus, we are on the lookout for the next generation of enthusiastic plant-soil ecologists based in Australia who would like to join the committee, run the journal club or another new activity – the soil is the limit! If you are reading this and feel like this could be you, come and have a chat with one of us during the conference, message us on Twitter or email us at . We are friendly fun-gi!

The Plant-Soil Ecology Research Chapter will be convening a symposium at the 2022 ESA-SCBO joint conference in November. Registrations are currently open.