Comparing the Predicted versus Realized Rate of Adaptation of to Climate Change.

AbstractFisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection (FTNS) can be used in a quantitative genetics framework to predict the rate of adaptation in populations. Here, we estimated the capacity for a wild population of the annual legume to adapt to future environments and compared predicted and realized rates of adaptation. We planted pedigreed seeds from one population into three prairie reconstructions along an east-to-west decreasing precipitation gradient.

Estimating the capacity of Chamaecrista fasciculata for adaptation to change in precipitation.

Adaptation through natural selection may be the only means by which small and fragmented plant populations will persist through present day environmental change. A population's additive genetic variance for fitness (V (W)) represents its immediate capacity to adapt to the environment in which it exists. We evaluated this property for a population of the annual legume Chamaecrista fasciculata through a quantitative genetic experiment in the tallgrass prairie region of the Midwestern United States, where changing climate is predicted to include more variability in rainfall.

Soil microbial communities and elk foraging intensity: implications for soil biogeochemical cycling in the sagebrush steppe.

Foraging intensity of large herbivores may exert an indirect top-down ecological force on soil microbial communities via changes in plant litter inputs. We investigated the responses of the soil microbial community to elk (Cervus elaphus) winter range occupancy across a long-term foraging exclusion experiment in the sagebrush steppe of the North American Rocky Mountains, combining phylogenetic analysis of fungi and bacteria with shotgun metagenomics and extracellular enzyme assays. Winter foraging intensity was associated with reduced bacterial richness and increasingly distinct bacterial communities.

Elk, sagebrush, and saprotrophs: indirect top-down control on microbial community composition and function.

Saprotrophic microbial communities in soil are primarily structured by the availability of growth-limiting resources (i.e., plant detritus), a bottom-up ecological force.