Composition of soil assemblages across ecological drivers parallels that of nodule assemblages in ssp. in interior Alaska.

In root nodule symbioses (RNS) between nitrogen (N)-fixing bacteria and plants, bacterial symbionts cycle between nodule-inhabiting and soil-inhabiting niches that exert differential selection pressures on bacterial traits. Little is known about how the resulting evolutionary tension between host plants and symbiotic bacteria structures naturally occurring bacterial assemblages in soils. We used DNA cloning to examine soil-dwelling assemblages of the actinorhizal symbiont in sites with long-term stable assemblages in ssp.

Evidence of differential phenotypic plasticity in a desert mustard.

Understanding the effect of the environment on trait variation is critical for ecologically and economically important plants. Here, we asked whether differences in soil moisture are a source of variation in Sahara mustard (). We subjected common garden populations of plants derived from native, invasive, and landrace sources (ranges) to varying water addition treatments.

The Environmental Data Initiative: Connecting the past to the future through data reuse.

The Environmental Data Initiative (EDI) is a trustworthy, stable data repository, and data management support organization for the environmental scientist. In a bottom-up community process, EDI was built with the premise that freely and easily available data are necessary to advance the understanding of complex environmental processes and change, to improve transparency of research results, and to democratize ecological research. EDI provides tools and support that allow the environmental researcher to easily integrate data publishing into the research workflow.