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Article
Trophic group specific responses of alpine nematode communities to 18 years of N addition and codominant plant removal
Human-driven nitrogen (N) deposition can alter soil biogeochemistry and plant communities, both critical to soil biota. However, understanding the relative impact of the relationship between nutrient resources...
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Article
Causes and consequences of differences in soil and seed microbiomes for two alpine plants
Seed and soil microbiomes strongly affect plant performance, and these effects can scale-up to influence plant community structure. However, seed and soil microbial community composition are variable across la...
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Article
Open AccessHost identity is the dominant factor in the assembly of nematode and tardigrade gut microbiomes in Antarctic Dry Valley streams
Recent work examining nematode and tardigrade gut microbiomes has identified species-specific relationships between host and gut community composition. However, only a handful of species from either phylum hav...
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Article
Invasive annual cheatgrass enhances the abundance of native microbial and microinvertebrate eukaryotes but reduces invasive earthworms
The invasive annual grass cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) has been previously correlated with changes in soil labile nitrogen (N) and soil organic matter (SOM) that have not been consistent across sites and studies....
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Article
Open AccessEffects of natural and experimental drought on soil fungi and biogeochemistry in an Amazon rain forest
Microbiota are essential components of the soil, driving biogeochemical cycles. Fungi affect decomposition and biotic interactions with plants across scales. Climate projections suggest that extended dry seaso...
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Chapter
Of Microbes and Mummies: Tales of Microbial Activity and Inactivity at 6000 m a.s.l.
In this chapter, we address two broad dilemmas related to the potential for microbial life to function in extreme high-elevation, volcanic soils. The first dilemma was posed by the existence of almost perfectl...
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Article
Evidence for phosphorus limitation in high-elevation unvegetated soils, Niwot Ridge, Colorado
A key challenge to understanding the effects of climate change and nutrient deposition on ecosystem functioning is our lack of knowledge about nutrient limitations of heterotrophic and phototrophic microbial c...
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Article
Experimental cryoconite holes as mesocosms for studying community ecology
Cryoconite holes are surface melt-holes in ice containing sediments and typically organisms. In Antarctica, they form an attractive system of isolated mesocosms in which to study microbial community dynamics i...
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Article
Litter-driven feedbacks influence plant colonization of a high elevation early successional ecosystem
Plant-microbe interactions are crucial components of ecosystem development but are understudied during early succession. The goal of this study was to investigate species-specific effects of plants on unvegeta...
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Article
Structure of bacterial and eukaryote communities reflect in situ controls on community assembly in a high-alpine lake
Recent work suggests that microbial community composition in high-elevation lakes is significantly influenced by microbes entering from upstream terrestrial and aquatic habitats. To test this idea, we conducte...
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Article
Growth of cyanobacterial soil crusts during diurnal freeze-thaw cycles
Various Nostoc spp. and related cyanobacteria are able to survive extreme temperatures and are among the most successful colonists of high-elevation sites being exposed due to glacial retreat. It is unclear, howe...
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Article
Rapid temporal changes in root colonization by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and fine root endophytes, not dark septate endophytes, track plant activity and environment in an alpine ecosystem
Fungal root endophytes play an important role in plant nutrition, hel** plants acquire nutrients in exchange for photosynthates. We sought to characterize the progression of root colonization by arbuscular m...
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Article
Open AccessSpatio-temporal dynamics of soil bacterial communities as a function of Amazon forest phenology
Most tropical evergreen rain forests are characterised by varying degrees of precipitation seasonality that influence plant phenology and litterfall dynamics. Soil microbes are sensitive to soil water:air rati...
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Article
Nutrient limitation of soil microbial activity during the earliest stages of ecosystem development
A dominant paradigm in ecology is that plants are limited by nitrogen (N) during primary succession. Whether generalizable patterns of nutrient limitation are also applicable to metabolically and phylogenetica...
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Chapter and Conference Paper
Do Growth Kinetics of Snow-mold Fungi Explain Exponential CO2 Fluxes Through the Snow?
Plant pathogenic snow-mold fungi have received much attention for many years due to their economic importance, but the identity and activity of nonpathogenic fungi of the under-snow environment have received m...
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Article
Biogeography and habitat modelling of high-alpine bacteria
Soil microorganisms dominate terrestrial biogeochemical cycles; however, we know very little about their spatial distribution and how changes in the distributions of specific groups of microbes translate into ...
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Article
Functional shifts in unvegetated, perhumid, recently-deglaciated soils do not correlate with shifts in soil bacterial community composition
Past work in recently deglaciated soils demonstrates that microbial communities undergo shifts prior to plant colonization. To date, most studies have focused on relatively ‘long’ chronosequences with the abil...
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Article
The trade-off between growth rate and yield in microbial communities and the consequences for under-snow soil respiration in a high elevation coniferous forest
Soil microbial respiration is a critical component of the global carbon cycle, but it is uncertain how properties of microbes affect this process. Previous studies have noted a thermodynamic trade-off between ...
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Article
Open AccessInsights and inferences about integron evolution from genomic data
Integrons are mechanisms that facilitate horizontal gene transfer, allowing bacteria to integrate and express foreign DNA. These are important in the exchange of antibiotic resistance determinants, but can als...
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Article
The effects of tree rhizodeposition on soil exoenzyme activity, dissolved organic carbon, and nutrient availability in a subalpine forest ecosystem
Previous studies have found that root carbon inputs to the soil can stimulate the mineralization of existing soil carbon (C) pools. It is still uncertain, however, whether this “primed” C is derived from eleva...
