Moss experiments with Northland Preparatory Academy

Seventh grade blogger, Michal Swanson, has been documenting the year in science in Susan Brown's Northland Preparatory Academy classroom in her blog titled "I'm lichen it". The Bowker Lab has been featured a few times as a result of Dr. Antoninka's involvement with the class. She visited several times to help students learn about biocrusts, climate change, and to set up a semester-long experiment testing climate change effects on Syntrichia ruralis. 

Check out some of these posts (and feel free to browse others):
1. The semester long experiment we conducted to look at how mosses respond to altered climate
2. Moss revival (videos from Kyle Doherty).
3. An interview with Dr. Antoninka
4. Her visit to our NAU facilities

Great job Michal!

Geodermatophilia: BioCrust3 Abstract & Financial Assistance Deadline...

Geodermatophilia: BioCrust3 Abstract & Financial Assistance Deadline...: Dear all,  In September you'll have the opportunity to meet biocrust researchers and enthusiasts from around the world in one o...

Rapid Cultivation of Fire Mosses

My first greenhouse experiment is complete! For this study I was interested in manipulating substrates and soil amendments to optimize the growth of my "fire mosses". Fire mosses colonize burned landscapes after severe forest fires and my research is focused on exploring their potential as a restoration tool. This being my first experiment with these species and in the greenhouse, I decided to try a little bit of everything with a nod toward burned material. Starting with the two most early serial species, Funaria hygrometrica and Bryum argentum, I added dry moss chunks as "inoculum" to an organic, garden topsoil substrate as well as a mixture of sand and coconut coir (which is an alternative to peat moss). These species can be dominant after high severity fire, so I tested soil amendments of ash from a friends stove and charcoal picked up from the local nursery, both of which are plentiful on burned landscapes. I was interested in how well burlap influenced the growth of mosses. If the mosses grew well on the burlap it could assist in harvesting and dispersal of greenhouse grown inoculum onto the landscape

The Experiment: complete with 216 units 

Channing adding "Inoculum" to a unit

In a side experiment I tested how well these mosses grew on the soils I had just collected them from. I thought this would allow me to see how good the greenhouse environment was for growing mosses, as well as, be a good comparison between natural soils and my engineered substrates. One unintended but awesome outcome of my natural soil experiment was...you guessed it, lots of moss! No matter if I had added inoculum or not, Funaria was growing like mad from these soils, likely due to soil propigules left over after sieving out my inoculum.

Funaria (bright green) growing in a unit inoculate with Bryum only (silver green)

These ruderal (or, early successional) species grow very quickly under the right conditions and treatment effects were evident quite early on. Because of this, I decided to monitor my experiment every three weeks to track growth effectively. After 9 weeks some treatments were approaching full coverage which was very exciting to see in such a short time!

Funaria and Bryum Inoculated Unit at Week 1 (Left) and Week 9 (Right)

SEGA: Progress and updates from a warm winter

With the warm February temperatures we have been experiencing in Northern Arizona, it is starting to feel more and more like May. May? Wow, the thought of Late Spring is alluring: SEGA will be up and running with Blue grama in the field for a second growing season and we will have planted Ponderosa pine for the tree's first growing season out of the glasshouse.

It seems like an appropriate time then, to give a brief update on SEGA. In case your new to our site and some of the work we do, SEGA stands for Southwestern Experimental Garden Array. The Array consists of two parallel elevation gradients: one on basalt derived soils and one on lime and sandstone derived soils. The elevation gradient allows us to manipulate Temperature and Precipitation.  The contrasting soil types allow us to test fascinating questions in regards to plant migration, soil microbes, and local adaptation to edaphic factors. How important is soil type to plants  migrating to new locations? Are soil microbes generalists or specialists to soil conditions and types? Can soil microbes facilitate plant adaptation to new climatic and soil environments?

The weather and irrigation infrastructure at SEGA sure makes for a great platform for cool experimental designs!

Additional work on SEGA is hoping to better understand population genetics and epigenetics of Southwestern White Pine and the genetic mechanisms that promote resistance to drought and White Pine Blister Rust, an introduced fungal pathogen. The hope is that by better understanding some of these traits, land managers would be able to preserve the range of white pine in the face of pathogen encroachment and densification combined with increased drought frequency and severity. This project is led by Dr. Kristen Waring and her current graduate student Jessica DaBell if you want more information. 

I decided to help sow seeds with the White Pine research crew- another 40 down... 10,000+ to go! 

But for now, back to microbes. So far we find consistent evidence that there is high specificity in plants and soil microbes; not any old microbe will do, plants need the microbes from their site origin. This finding supports Nancy Johnson's "no place like home" hypothesis. As we continue our studies, our Ponderosa Pine seedlings are beginning to break bud with the warm weather and lengthening of days. Stay tuned for updates as we launch field season and continue to monitor our plants in the Field! 

Bud burst on a Ponderosa Pine Seedling has
resulted in some stunning fresh growth. This tree is
growing in soil from its home site, but with
a soil organism community from an unique site.  

Root for the home team! That leader is taking off!
This pine is grown with its home team soil organisms
and in its original soil. 

Picturing biocrusts during the wintertime

The conditions in Moab, UT have been pretty ideal for crusts this winter.  6+ inches of snow stuck around for a while, then slowly melted, leaving north facing slopes with wet soil surfaces while the sun is shining. These conditions have resulted in some of the most robust looking crusts I have ever see.  Robust crusts like these, and the 2015 Biogeochemistry paper by Anthony Darrouzet-Nardi et al. which observed substantial net photosynthesis rates underneath snow, seem to suggest there is exciting work to be done about seasonality of biocrust growth and the importance of winter snow cover to these systems. Enjoy the pretty pictures of crusts!

   

 

Note the sporophytes emerging! 

New Blog Feature: Web Apps

To explore new dimensions of science communication and data visualization, the Bowker Lab group is now developing informative web apps for a few of our research efforts. These are now located under the 'Web Apps' tab at the top of the page. Currently, we are featuring biocrust survey data from our MPG partnership: http://bowkerlab.blogspot.com/p/web-apps.html.

Each of our survey points, to date, is represented on the map, and you can click on the points to reveal the species composition, with links to photos of each species. You can also explore the effects of environmental gradients, visualized as differing colors, on measures of biodiversity, depicted as dot size.

We hope that these data exploration tools will get more folks excited about biocrusts, and, in this case, assist land managers in conservation efforts!

Some recent papers from the lab (late 2015, early 2016)

Antoninka, A.J., Bowker, M.A., Reed, S.C., Doherty, K.D. 2015. Production of greenhouse-grown biocrust mosses and associated cyanobacteria to rehabilitate dryland soil function. Restoration Ecology doi:10.1111/rec/12311.

Results of one of our first experiments in the bryotron, the work that has convinced us there's a bright future in culturing biocrusts for rehabilitation. This photo has become the face of our lab.

Antoninka, A.J., Ritchie, M.E., Johnson, N.C. 2015. The hidden Serengeti - Mycorrhizal fungi respond to environmental gradients. Pedobiologia 58:165-176.

Rainfall and soil gradients differentially affect various members of the arbuscular mycorrhizal community. 

Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Maestre, F.T., Gallardo, A., Bowker M.A., et al. (over 50 authors) 2016. Human impacts and aridity differentially alter soil N availability in drylands worldwide. Global Ecology and Biogeography 25:36-45.

Another product from the global drylands database featuring, I think, the first SEM Manu constructed and a clever way that he summarized human impacts spatially. The guy is on fire.