Research in the Frederickson Lab focuses on the ecology and evolution of mutualism, or cooperation between species. Mutualisms are extremely common in nature—so common, in fact, that every plant and animal on Earth may be involved in at least one mutualism. The Frederickson Lab uses field, molecular, and computational approaches to study diverse plant-animal and host-microbe mutualisms, with the goal of understanding how and why species cooperate.