Publications by authors named "Bram W Stone"
Article Synopsis
- Climate change is making droughts more frequent and severe, which disrupts important soil functions like carbon storage and nutrient cycling, largely influenced by microorganisms.
- Research shows that during drought, over 90% of bacterial and archaeal groups stop growing, with very few capable of surviving compared to normal conditions.
- However, exposure to elevated temperatures and CO2 for six years helps some microorganisms adapt, leading to a small increase in drought-resistant species, emphasizing the need to study drought alongside future climate changes for better predictions.
Article Synopsis
- Predicting how ecosystems function is essential for understanding the impact of climate change, but current predictions often ignore the role of microbial biodiversity.* -
- New methods allow scientists to measure specific traits of microbes, revealing that evolutionary history (phylogeny) can help predict bacterial growth rates in different environments like Arctic, boreal, temperate, and tropical ecosystems.* -
- The study found that phylogenetic relationships can explain a significant portion of the variation in bacterial growth rates, suggesting that understanding microbial evolution can enhance predictions about ecosystem processes.*
Article Synopsis
- - The study investigates how density dependence affects bacterial populations in soil ecosystems, especially under nutrient addition conditions, using a method called quantitative stable isotope probing (qSIP).
- - Results show that in soils with added nitrogen and carbon, higher bacterial population densities lead to lower growth rates and higher mortality rates, contradicting the expectation that density dependence supports biodiversity.
- - Overall, the findings suggest that stronger negative density dependence linked to nutrient availability may actually reduce bacterial diversity rather than promote it, indicating a complex relationship between density and ecosystem dynamics in microbial communities.
Article Synopsis
- * The interactions between living microbes, dead microbial cells, soil fauna, and plants significantly influence microbial metabolic functions and the cycling of organic matter in the soil.
- * Advances in genomic technologies are enabling researchers to analyze microbial traits, offering insights that improve biogeochemical models and help predict how ecosystems will respond to climate change.
Article Synopsis
- Secondary minerals, especially short-range order minerals, significantly influence soil composition and microbial communities, affecting how bacteria grow in different soils.
- A study examined three soils with various mineral contents, finding that the presence of short-range order minerals suppressed bacterial growth overall, impacting 25-36% of bacterial taxa across the soils.
- The addition of carbon from plant litter or root exudates had a minor effect on bacterial growth compared to soil type, but still promoted growth for some bacterial families, indicating the complex interactions between bacteria, minerals, and organic matter in soil carbon processing.
Article Synopsis
- Nutrient amendments reduced the diversity of bacteria in soil, causing carbon flow to be dominated by fewer bacterial types.
- Different bacterial groups were found to play distinct roles in respiration across four ecosystems, suggesting that specific taxa could control soil carbon cycling.
- The study highlights the importance of understanding carbon flow through specific bacteria to improve soil carbon models, which could help refine predictions related to climate change.*
Article Synopsis
- Microorganisms play a crucial role in breaking down soil carbon, and their activity can change with rising temperatures, potentially influencing climate change.
- This study investigates how different bacterial groups from various climates (Arctic, boreal, temperate, and tropical) respond to temperature changes, revealing that each group's growth sensitivity to temperature varies.
- The research indicates that the traits of these bacterial communities can help predict how carbon cycling will respond to climate change globally.
Article Synopsis
- Laboratory measurements of bacterial growth often do not predict growth rates in natural soil environments, indicating a disconnect between genomic traits and ecological performance.
- In response to resource addition, growth rates were influenced by the number of 16S rRNA gene copies and genome size, showing that these genomic traits can affect performance under specific conditions.
- The study emphasizes that genomic traits related to stress tolerance may be more important in natural soils, highlighting the need for direct measurements to better understand the link between microbial genes and ecosystem function.
The phyllosphere presents a unique system of discrete and easily replicable surfaces colonized primarily by bacteria. However, the biogeography of bacteria in the phyllosphere is little understood, especially at small to intermediate scales. Bacterial communities on the leaves of 91 southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) trees 1-452 m apart in a small forest plot were analyzed and fragments of the 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequenced using the Illumina platform.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF