Scott T. Bates, Ph.D.

Nils K. Nelson Associate Professor of Biological Sciences

Prairie Research Institute Affiliate, Univ. of Illinois

Introduction

Scott Bates is currently an assistant professor on PNW’s Westville campus, whose foci include bioinformatics, microbial ecology, microbiology and mycology. His research seeks to harness the power of modern molecular methods to broadly investigate how assemblages of microbes function in their environment.

Research Overview

My research seeks to harness the power of modern molecular methods to broadly investigate how assemblages of microbes function in their environment, change across different spatial scales, and interact with one another in terrestrial ecosystems. I am also involved in fungal taxonomy, natural history collection data management, and development of bioinformatics software.

Select Publications

Bates, S.T., A.N. Miller, and the Macrofungi/Microfungi Collections Consortia. 2018. The protochecklist of North American nonlichenized Fungi. Mycologia 110: 1222–1348. https://doi.org/10.1080/00275514.2018.1515410

Krah, F.-S., S.T. Bates, and A.N. Miller. 2019. rMyCoPortal – an R package to interface with the Mycology Collections Portal. Biodiversity Data Journal 7: e31511. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.7.e31511

Zanne A., A. Milo, C. Aguilar, D. Maynard, D. Lindner, D. Hibbett, D. Floudas, H. Flores, H. Nilsson, J. Powell, J. Talbot, J. Schilling, K. Reseder, K. Abarenkov, M. Schildhauer, M. Afkhami, N. Christian, P. kennedy, P. Busby, R. Gazis, S.T. Bates, S. Smith, T. Crowther, and W. Cornwell. 2019. Fungal functional ecology: Bringing a trait based approach to plant-associated fungi. Biological Reviews (online early). https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12570

Teaching Focus

I teach undergraduate and graduate level courses, with topics including Bioinformatics, Ecology of Microorganisms, Genetics, Microbiology, and Mycology