Dear Colleagues, Friends, and Family 4/28/2026 It is with immense sadness and shock that I share the passing of Dr. Adriana Romero Olivares, a brand-new Assistant Professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at UC Riverside. mealtrain.com/trains/l3kg64

If you want to offer support to her family, you can do so here: mealtrain.com/trains/l3kg64

especially her husband, Dr. Jovani Catalan Dibene, and her two young children. With deepest sympathy, Joel L. Sachs Professor & Chair,  Evolution Ecology & Organismal Biology

The EEOB Department is heartbroken by the sudden and unexpected loss of our colleague and friend, Adriana. We extend our deepest condolences to Dr. Romero Olivares’ family, friends, colleagues, and all who knew her,

before coming to UCR. Adriana grew up in Mexico in a town known for growing oranges. The baseball team there is called the "Naranjeros" (roughly translating to "orange growers"), so she said that it felt like it was meant to be to settle in Riverside.

Dr. Romero Olivares received both her Bachelors and Masters from Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. She then came to UC Irvine for her Ph.D. After multiple postdoc appointments, she landed a job at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, where she stayed for five years

A core goal of her research was to study desert fungi to help us plan and mitigate the effects of global warming. At heart, Adriana was a soil microbiologist, and her research explored how fungi respond and adapt to a changing environment.

Adriana was well known and appreciated for her kind and generous nature, her hard and public advocacy to enhance equal access in higher education, and her immense excitement to study fungi in natural habitats, especially the deserts of the American Southwest.

Adriana joined UCR on January 1, 2026, and was just starting up her research and teaching here. Although her career was cut short, Dr. Romero Olivares had a huge impact on her field of microbial ecology and on the many students and researchers that she touched.

Deadline this weekend. We still have a few open spots!!

See the AMAZING John McCutcheon give the Keynote address (mccutcheonlab.org). It promises to be a great meeting!

Deadline soon! Registration is now FREE for graduate students and postdocs for the 14th Annual Yosemite Symbiosis workshop. THANKS to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation! Space is limited. Learn more and REGISTER here snri.ucmerced.edu/form/symbi… Check out our new location!

NEW: Registration is now FREE for graduate students and postdocs for the 14th Annual Yosemite Symbiosis workshop. THANKS to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation! Space is limited. Learn more and REGISTER here: snri.ucmerced.edu/form/symbi…

Variation in symbiont fitness during co-inoculations did not measurably affect plant performance, suggesting that predicted conflict over the joint phenotype of rhizobia fitness has negligible effect on the host.

However, ineffective strains exhibited genotypic variation in their fitness in nodules within individual nodules co-infected with a beneficial strain, suggesting a role for symbiont competitiveness in shaping this joint phenotype.

In mixed infections, ineffective strains always had lower relative fitness in nodules compared to beneficial strains, consistent with efficient punishment of non-fixing rhizobia.

We co-inoculated four A. strigosus plant lines with nine combinations of effective and ineffective Bradyrhizobium strains and measured the relative fitness of ineffective strains within individual nodules, as hosts must select against uncooperative symbionts to maintain benefits.

Bradyrhizobium symbionts form root nodules on compatible hosts, with strains varying from effective, fixing substantial nitrogen for the host, to ineffective strains that do not fix nitrogen and provide no benefit to host growth.

We studied associations between Acmispon strigosus, an annual legume native to California, and its nitrogen-fixing symbionts in the genus Bradyrhizobium.

Really Excited to get this great work out from Camille Wendlandt and others. #editorschoice @jevbio.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/jeb/voae151