Microbial responses to environmental change
Because of the importance of microbes in geochemical cycling, the response of microbial species to climate change, pollution and other environmental change can have strong implications for the function of ecosystems. In collaboration with Dr. Shahid Naeem (Columbia University), I am assessing changes in bacterial and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal communities in response to carbon dioxide enrichment, nitrogen deposition and levels of plant functional diversity in a grassland experimental system (the BioCON project, Cedar Creek LTER). We are using Terminal Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (T-RFLP), a DNA-based community fingerprinting approach, and analysis of environmental DNA clone libraries to assess community composition between treatments.