Gukailin Ao

BG Biogeosciences

The 2025 Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award is awarded to Gukailin Ao for the poster/PICO entitled:

Linking root phosphatase activity to root chemical and morphological traits across species: a global analysis (Ao, G.; Xu, C.; Han, M.; Wang, X.; Zhu, B.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Gukailin Ao is a PhD candidate at Peking University, affiliated with the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences. Under the supervision of Prof. Biao Zhu, his research explores how plants acquire nutrients and how plant–soil feedbacks operate in forest ecosystems, with particular emphasis on plant functional traits and rhizosphere processes.

At EGU 2025, his poster showed how root phosphatase—a key exudate linked to phosphorus acquisition—coordinates and trades off against other P-foraging strategies (root morphology and mycorrhizal colonization), and how this enzyme can be integrated into the multidimensional root economic space. The findings offer new insight into how plants balance alternative nutrient strategies to optimize carbon economy and will help parameterize vegetation models.