Effects of vegetation rooting characteristics on carbonate weathering and critical zone evolution - Wen, H.; Sullivan, P.L.; G. L. Macpherson; Li, L. (Earth and Planetary Science Letters)

Removing a perched culvert facilitates dispersal of fishes in an intermittent prairie stream but not recovery from drought - K. B. Gido; Hedden, S.C.; Bruckerhoff, Lindsey A; Pennock, C.A.; Hedden, Crosby K.; Hopper, Garrett W.; Renner, E.A.; Johnson, E.R.; Postlethwait, B.J. (Freshwater Science)

What drives grassland ecosystem multifunctionality: Grazing pressure or plant community parameters? - Ren, H.; Zhang, Y.; Gui, W.; Yang, G.; G.T. Wilson; Cobb, A.B.; Eviner, V.T.; Hu, S.; Yongfei Bai (Functional Ecology)

Decadal persistence of grassland soil organic matter derived from litter and pyrogenic inputs - Leuthold, Sam J.; Soong, Jennifer L.; Even, Rebecca J.; Cotrufo, M. Francesca (Nature Geoscience, 2025)

Grassland woody encroachment alters subsurface mineral weathering and groundwater composition in a carbonate system - Anhold, C.; Hatley, C.; Alcantar-Velasquez, E.; Keen, R.M.; Sadayappan, K.; Jarecke, K.; Sullivan, P.L.; Nippert, J.B.; Li, L.; Macpherson, G.L.; Kirk, M.F. (Chemical Geology, 2025)

Assessing drought sensitivity across the shortgrass steppe biome - Hedberg, S. (Colorado State University, 2024)

Biogeochemical and community ecology responses to the wetting of non-perennial streams - Price, Adam Nicholas; Zimmer, Margaret Ann; Bergstrom, Anna; Burgin, Amy Jo; Seybold, Erin Cedar; Krabbenhoft, Corey Anne; Zipper, Sam; Busch, Michelle Hope; W. K. Dodds; Walters, Annika; Rogosch, Jane Sarah; Stubbington, Rachel; et al. (Nature Water, 2024)

Biological and physical controls of methane uptake in grassland soils across the US Great Plains - Koyama, Akihiro; Johnson, Nels G.; Brewer, Paul; Webb, Colleen T.; von Fischer, Joseph C. (Ecosphere, 2024)

Changes in water age during dry‐down of a non‐perennial stream - Swenson, Logan J.; Zipper, Sam; Peterson, Delaney M.; Jones, C. Nathan; Burgin, Amy J.; Seybold, Erin; Kirk, Matthew F.; Hatley, Camden (Water Resources Research, 2024)

Combined effects of fire and drought are not sufficient to slow shrub encroachment in tallgrass prairie - Keen, R. M.; Bachle, S.; Bartmess, M.; Jesse B. Nippert (Oecologia, 2024)

Contrasting shrub and grass hydraulic responses to experimental drought - O’Keefe, Kimberly; Jesse B. Nippert; Keen, Rachel M.; McCulloh, Katherine A. (Oecologia, 2024)

Drought‐tolerant grassland species are generally more resistant to competition - Mount, Hailey E.; M. D. Smith; Alan K. Knapp; Griffin-Nolan, R.J.; Collins, Scott L.; Atkins, David H.; Stears, Alice E.; Laughlin, Daniel C. (Journal of Ecology, 2024)

Evaluating methods for measuring the leaf area index of encroaching shrubs in grasslands: From leaves to optical methods, 3-D scanning, and airborne observation - Tooley, E. G; Jesse B. Nippert; Z. Ratajczak (Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 2024)

Experimental evidence that nest orientation influences microclimate in a temperate grassland - Corimanya, Joanna; Smith, Emma; W. A. Boyle (Journal of Field Ornithology, 2024)

Extreme drought impacts have been underestimated in grasslands and shrublands globally - M. D. Smith; Wilkins, Kate D.; Holdrege, Martin C.; Wilfahrt, Peter; S.L Collins; Knapp, Alan K.; Sala, Osvaldo E.; Dukes, Jeffrey S.; Phillips, Richard P.; Yahdjian, Laura; Gherardi, Laureano A.; Ohlert, Timothy; et al. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024)

Field experiments have enhanced our understanding of drought impacts on terrestrial ecosystems—But where do we go from here? - Alan K. Knapp; Condon, Kathleen V.; Folks, Christine C.; Sturchio, Matthew A.; Griffin-Nolan, Robert J.; Kannenberg, Steven A.; Gill, Amy S.; Hajek, Olivia L.; Siggers, J. Alexander; M. D. Smith (Functional Ecology, 2024)

Grass evolutionary lineages can be identified using hyperspectral leaf reflectance - Slapikas, Ryan; Pau, Stephanie; Donnelly, Ryan C.; Ho, Che‐Ling; Nippert, J.B.; Helliker, Brent R.; Riley, William J.; Still, Christopher J.; Griffith, Daniel M. (Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 2024)

Grass leaf structural and stomatal trait responses to climate gradients assessed over the 20th century and across the Great Plains, USA - Donnelly, Ryan C; Nippert, J.B.; Wedel, Emily R; Ferguson, Carolyn J (AoB PLANTS, 2024)

Grassland sensitivity to drought is related to functional composition across East Asia and North America - Song, Lin; Griffin-Nolan, Robert J.; Muraina, Taofeek O.; Chen, Jiaqi; Te, Niwu; Shi, Yuan; Whitney, Kenneth D.; Zhang, Bingchuan; Yu, Qiang; M. D. Smith; Zuo, Xiaoan; Wang, Zhengwen; et al. (Ecology, 2024)

Heterogeneity promotes resilience in restored prairie: Implications for the environmental heterogeneity hypothesis - Wojciechowski, Ashley A.; J. M. Blair; S. Collins; S.G. Baer (Ecological Applications, 2024)

High among‐species variability in the context dependence of herbivory across disturbance, weather and topoedaphic gradients - Sutton, Alex O.; Z. Ratajczak; Louthan, A.M. (Journal of Ecology, 2024)

Hillslope evolution of heterolithic landscapes: investigating processes and controls on geomorphic development of staircase landscapes - McCarroll, Nicholas (Department of Geography, 2024)

Impacts of patch burn grazing on the invertebrate communities of Kansas rangelands - Bunch, Zachary (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG ), 2024)

The long shadow of woody encroachment: An integrated approach to modeling grassland songbird habitatAbstract - Silber, K. M.; Hefley, T.J.; Castro-Miller, Henry N.; Ratajczak, Z.; Boyle, W. A. (Ecological Applications, 2024)

Mycorrhizal‐herbivore interactions and the competitive release of subdominant tallgrass prairie species - Duell, Eric B.; Todd, Timothy C.; Wilson, Gail W. T. (Journal of Ecology, 2024)

North American megafauna, friend or foe to woody encroachment across the Great Plains? Further exploring the American bison’s ecological role on plant communities - Noble, Sidney (Department of Biology, 2024)

Nutrient dilution and the future of herbivore populations - Kaspari, Michael; Welti, Ellen A.R. (Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2024)

Phenotypic plasticity and ecological memory in Andropogon gerardii: responses to simulated grazing pressure - Mohammadi, Shahla (Department of Biology, 2024)

Plant and microbial feedbacks maintain soil nitrogen legacies in burned and unburned grasslandsAbstract - Nieland, Matthew A.; L.H. Zeglin (Journal of Ecology, 2024)

Plant responses to changing rainfall frequency and intensity - Feldman, A.F.; Feng, X.; Felton, A.J.; Konings, A.G.; Knapp, A.K.; Biederman, A.J.; Poulter, B. (Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 2024)

Plant responses to changing rainfall frequency and magnitude - Feldman, Andrew F.; Feng, Xue; Felton, Andrew J.; Konings, Alexandra G.; Alan K. Knapp; Biederman, Joel A.; Poulter, Benjamin (Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 2024)

Product-inhibition feedbacks, not microbial population level tradeoffs or soil pH, regulate decomposition potential under nutrient eutrophication - Nieland, Matthew A.; Carson, Christine M.; Floyd, Victoria; Zeglin, Lydia H. (Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 2024)

The role of disturbance in Great Plains grassland community dynamics - Bloodworth, Kathryn (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG ), 2024)

Save or spend? Diverging water‐use strategies of grasses and encroaching clonal shrubs - Keen, R. M.; Helliker, B. R.; McCulloh, K. A.; Jesse B. Nippert (Journal of Ecology, 2024)

Scientific collaborative within-group conduct, data-sharing, and publication agreements - W. K. Dodds (BioScience, 2024)

Spatial and physical characteristics of bison wallows in the Flint Hills of Kansas - Horne, E.A.; Blackmore, Pam; Bello, Nora M.; Taylor, Jeffrey; Skibbe, Adam (Ecosphere, 2024)

Uncovering patterns and processes regulating stream water chemistry from catchment to continental scale - Sadayappan, Kayalvizhi (Environmental Engineering, 2024)

Unexpected hydrologic response to ecosystem state change in tallgrass prairie - Keen, R.M.; Sadayappan, K.; Jarecke, K.M.; Li, L.; Kirk, M.F.; Sullivan, P.L.; Jesse B. Nippert (Journal of Hydrology, 2024)

Woody encroachment modifies subsurface structure and hydrological function - Jarecke, K.; Keen, R.M.; Sadayappan, K.; Kirk, M.F.; Li, L.; Nippert, J.B.; Sullivan, P.L. (ECOHYDROLOGY, 2024)

Accounting for herbaceous communities in process‐based models will advance our understanding of “grassy” ecosystems - K.R. Wilcox; Chen, Anping; M.L. Avolio; Butler, Ethan E.; S.L Collins; Fisher, Rosie; Keenan, Trevor; Kiang, Nancy Y.; Alan K. Knapp; Koerner, S.E.; Kueppers, Lara; Liang, Guopeng; et al. (Global Change Biology, 2023)

Amorpha canescens and Andropogon gerardii recruit comparable foliar fungal communities across the steep precipitation gradient in Kansas - Dea, H.; McKenzie, D.A.; Clark, B.; Jumpponen, A. (Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, 2023)

Are we there yet: Assessing trajectories of two restored prairies to target native prairies over a decadal time frame - Weickert, Nathaniel (Department of Biology, 2023)

Assessing carbon storage capacity and saturation across six central US grasslands using data–model integration - K.R. Wilcox; S.L Collins; Alan K. Knapp; Pockman, William; Shi, Zheng; M. D. Smith; Luo, Yiqi (Biogeosciences, 2023)

Bison and cattle grazing influences on soil microbial N cycling and ecosystem N pools in annually burned tallgrass prairies - Vega Anguiano, N. (Department of Biology, 2023)

Clarifying the effect of biodiversity on productivity in natural ecosystems with longitudinal data and new methods for causal inference - Dee, L.E.; Ferraro, P.J.; Severen, C.; Kimmel, K.; Borer, E.T.; Byrnes, J.E.K.; Clark, A.; Hautier, Y.; Hector, A.; Raynaud, X.; Reich, P.B.; Wright, A.; et al. (Nature Communications, 2023)

Compositional variation in grassland plant communities - Bakker, Jonathan D.; Price, Jodi N.; Henning, Jeremiah A.; Batzer, Evan E.; Ohlert, Timothy J.; Wainwright, Claire E.; Adler, Peter B.; Alberti, Juan; Arnillas, Carlos Alberto; Biederman, Lori A.; Borer, Elizabeth T.; Brudvig, Lars A.; et al. (Ecosphere, 2023)

Contrasting intra‐annual population dynamics of two codominant species are consistent across spatial and temporal scales - Gray, Jesse E.; M. D. Smith (Journal of Ecology, 2023)

Data fusion of distance sampling and capture-recapture data - Mohankumar, Narmadha M.; Hefley, Trevor J.; Silber, Katy M.; Boyle, W. A. (Journal of Spatial Statistics, 2023)

Diversity–stability relationships across organism groups and ecosystem types become decoupled across spatial scales - Wisnoski, Nathan I.; Andrade, Riley; Castorani, Max C. N.; Catano, Christopher P.; Compagnoni, Aldo; Lamy, Thomas; Lany, Nina K.; Marazzi, Luca; Record, Sydne; Smith, Annie C.; Swan, Christopher M.; Tonkin, Jonathan D.; et al. (Ecology, 2023)

Drier streams despite a wetter climate in woody-encroached grasslands - Sadayappan, Kayalvizhi; Keen, Rachel; Jarecke, Karla M.; Moreno, Victoria; Nippert, J.B.; Kirk, M. F.; Sullivan, P.L.; Li, Li (Journal of Hydrology, 2023)

Dynamic plant–herbivore interactions between bison space use and vegetation heterogeneity in a tallgrass prairie - Ling, Bohua; Raynor, E.J.; A. Joern; Goodin, D.G. (Remote Sensing, 2023)

Early detection of wildfire risk in the Great Plains: merging machine learning, landscape metrics, and rich data sources - Noble, Brynn. (Department of Biology, 2023)

Ecohydrological implications of clonal shrub encroachment in tallgrass prairie - Keen, Rachel. (Department of Biology, 2023)

Ecosystem recovery from chronic fertilization: Biotic mechanisms underpinning soil nitrogen legacies in burned and unburned grasslands - Nieland, Matthew (Department of Biology, 2023)

Effect of genotypic richness, drought and mycorrhizal associations on productivity and functional traits of a dominant C4 grass - Pehim Limbu, Smriti; M.L. Avolio (Journal of Plant Ecology, 2023)

Electrolytes on the prairie: How urine‐like additions of Na and K shape the dynamics of a grassland food web - Kaspari, Michael; Welti, E.A.R. (Ecology, 2023)
The electrolytes Na and K both function to maintain water balance and membrane potential. However, these elements work differently in plants—where K is the primary electrolyte—than in animals—where ATPases require a balanced supply of Na and K. Here we use monthly factorial additions of Na and K to simulate bovine urine inputs and explore how these electrolytes ramify through a prairie food web. Against a seasonal trend of increasing grass biomass and decreasing water and elemental tissue concentrations, +K and +Na plots boosted water content and, when added together, plant biomass. Compared to control plots, +Na and +K plots increased element concentrations in aboveground plant tissue early in summer and decreased them in September. Simultaneously, invertebrate abundance on Na and K additions were sequentially higher and lower than control plots from June-September and were most suppressed when grass was most nutrient rich. K was the more effective plant electrolyte, but Na frequently promoted similar changes in grass ionomes. The soluble/leachable ions of Na and K showed significant ability to shape plant growth, water content, and the 15-element ionome, with consequences for higher trophic levels. Grasslands with high inputs of Na and K—via large mammal grazers or coastal aerosol deposition—likely enhance the ability of plants to adjust their aboveground ionomes, with dramatic consequences for the distribution of invertebrate consumers.

Emigration and survival correlate with different precipitation metrics throughout a grassland songbird's annual cycle - Silber, Katy M.; Mohankumar, Narmadha M.; Hefley, Trevor J.; W. A. Boyle (The Journal of Wildlife Management, 2023)

Evolutionary lineage explains trait variation among 75 coexisting grass species - Donnelly, R,; Wedel, E.R.; Taylor, J.H.; Nippert, J.B.; Helliker, B.R.; Riley, W.; Still, C.J.; Griffith, D. (New Phytologist, 2023)

Exploring global change impacts on plant-plant and plant-microbe interactions of grassland species - Pehim Limbu, Smriti (Johns Hopkins University, 2023)

Flux and stable isotope fractionation of CO2 in a mesic prairie headwater stream - Norwood, Brock S.; Stotler, Randy L.; Brookfield, Andrea; Sullivan, Pamela L.; Macpherson, G. L. (Journal of Water and Climate Change, 2023)

Grassland responses to seasonal shifts in water availability - Hajek, O.L. (Colorado State University, 2023)

Grazing intensity and fire frequency effects on plant species and community characteristics in a tallgrass prairie ecosystem - Rodgers, Abbigail (Ecosystem Science and Managemen, 2023)

How low can you go? Widespread challenges in measuring low stream discharge and a path forward - Seybold, Erin C.; Bergstrom, Anna; Jones, C. Nathan; Burgin, Amy J.; Zipper, Sam; Godsey, Sarah E.; W. K. Dodds; Zimmer, Margaret A.; Shanafield, Margaret; Datry, Thibault; Mazor, Raphael D.; Messager, Mathis L.; et al. (Limnology and Oceanography Letters, 2023)

Hymenolepis ackerti n. sp. (Eucestoda: Hymenolepididae) infecting cricetid rodents from the central Great Plains of North America - Jiménez, ín; Rowan, Brian; Hope, A.G. (Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad, 2023)

Impacts of riparian and non-riparian woody encroachment on tallgrass prairie ecohydrology - Keen, Rachel M.; Jesse B. Nippert; Sullivan, P.L.; Z. Ratajczak; Ritchey, Brynn; O’Keefe, K.; W. K. Dodds (Ecosystems, 2023)

Impacts of woody encroachment on the fate of soil co2 in grassland watersheds - Anhold, Christa (Department of Biology, 2023)

Intermittent streamflow generation in a merokarst headwater catchment - Hatley, Camden M.; Armijo, Brooklyn; Andrews, Katherine; Anhold, Christa; Nippert, J.B.; Kirk, Matthew F. (Environmental Science: Advances, 2023)
Intermittent headwater streams are highly vulnerable to environmental disturbances, but effective management of these water resources requires first understanding the mechanisms that generate streamflow. This study examined mechanisms governing streamflow generation in merokarst terrains, a type of carbonate terrain that covers much of the central United States yet has received relatively little attention in hydrological studies. We used high-frequency sampling of precipitation, stream water, and groundwater during summer 2021 to quantify the contributions to streamflow from different water sources and characterize their short-term dynamics in a 1.2 km2 merokarst catchment at the Konza Prairie Biological Station (Kansas, USA). Mixing calculations using stable water isotopes and dissolved ions indicate that streamflow is overwhelmingly contributed by groundwater discharge from thin (1–2 m) limestone aquifers, even during wet periods, when soil water and surface runoff are generally expected to be more important. Relationships between hydraulic heads in the aquifers and their contributions to streamflow differed early in the study period compared to later, after a major storm occurred, suggesting there is a critical threshold of groundwater storage that the bedrock needs to attain before fully connecting to the stream. Furthermore, contributions from each limestone unit varied during the study period in response to differences in their hydrogeological properties and/or their stratigraphic position, which in turn impacted both the length of streamflow and its composition. Taken together, we interpret that the subsurface storage threshold and variation in aquifer properties are major controllers of flow intermittency in merokarst headwater catchments.

Multiple global change drivers show independent, not interactive effects: a long-term case study in tallgrass prairie - Koerner, S.E.; M.L. Avolio; J. M. Blair; Alan K. Knapp; M. D. Smith (Oecologia, 2023)
Ecosystems are faced with an onslaught of co-occurring global change drivers. While frequently studied independently, the effects of multiple global change drivers have the potential to be additive, antagonistic, or synergistic. Global warming, for example, may intensify the effects of more variable precipitation regimes with warmer temperatures increasing evapotranspiration and thereby amplifying the effect of already dry soils. Here, we present the long-term effects (11 years) of altered precipitation patterns (increased intra-annual variability in the growing season) and warming (1 °C year-round) on plant community composition and aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP), a key measure of ecosystem functioning in mesic tallgrass prairie. Based on past results, we expected that increased precipitation variability and warming would have additive effects on both community composition and ANPP. Increased precipitation variability altered plant community composition and increased richness, with no effect on ANPP. In contrast, warming decreased ANPP via reduction in grass stems and biomass but had no effect on the plant community. Contrary to expectations, across all measured variables, precipitation and warming treatments had no interactive effects. While treatment interactions did not occur, each treatment did individually impact a different component of the ecosystem (i.e., community vs. function). Thus, different aspects of the ecosystem may be sensitive to different global change drivers in mesic grassland ecosystems.

Nothing lasts forever: Dominant species decline under rapid environmental change in global grasslands - Wilfahrt, Peter A.; Seabloom, Eric W.; Bakker, Jonathan D.; Biederman, Lori; Bugalho, Miguel N.; Cadotte, Marc W.; Caldeira, Maria C.; Catford, Jane A.; Chen, Qingqing; Donohue, Ian; Ebeling, Anne; Eisenhauer, Nico; et al. (Journal of Ecology, 2023)

Nutrient addition drives declines in grassland species richness primarily via enhanced species loss - Muehleisen, Andrew J.; Watkins, Carmen R. E.; Altmire, Gabriella R.; Shaw, E. Ashley; Case, Madelon F.; Aoyama, Lina; Brambila, Alejandro; Reed, Paul B.; LaForgia, Marina; Borer, Elizabeth T.; Seabloom, Eric W.; Bakker, Jonathan D.; et al. (Journal of Ecology, 2023)

Persistent decadal differences in plant communities assembled under contrasting climate conditions - Eckhoff, Kathryn D.; Scott, Drew A.; Manning, George; S.G. Baer (Ecological Applications, 2023)

Phytobiome stampede: Bison as potential dispersal agents for the tallgrass prairie microbiome - Saleh, Amgad A.; Kraisitudomsook, Nattapol; Frank, Erin; Dendy, Shauna; Leslie, John; Garrett, Karen (PhytoFrontiers™, 2023)

Pleoardoris graminearum, gen. et sp. nov., a new member of Pleosporales from North American Plains, its biogeography and effects on a foundation grass species - Pinchi-Davila, X.; Vargas-Hernandez, D.; Romero-Jimenez, M.; Jumpponen, A.; Rudgers, J.; Herrera, J.; Hutchinson, M.; Dunbar, J.M.; Kuske, C.; Porras-Alfaro, A. (Mycologia, 2023)

Prairie plant communities and their associated phyllosphere fungal communities change across the steep precipitation gradient in Kansas USA, though individual plant species’ phyllosphere communities may not - Dea, H. (Department of Biology, 2023)

Remotely sensed soil moisture can capture dynamics relevant to plant water uptake - Feldman, Andrew F.; Short Gianotti, Daniel J.; Dong, Jianzhi; Akbar, Ruzbeh; Crow, Wade T.; McColl, Kaighin A.; Konings, Alexandra G.; Nippert, J.B.; Tumber-Dávila, Shersingh Joseph; Holbrook, Noel M.; Rockwell, Fulton E.; Scott, Russell L.; et al. (Water Resources Research, 2023)

Repeated extreme droughts decrease root production, but not the potential for post‐drought recovery of root production, in a mesic grassland - Slette, I.J.; D.L. Hoover; M. D. Smith; Knapp, A.K. (Oikos, 2023)
Global climate change is expected to cause more frequent extreme droughts in many parts of the world. Despite the crucial role of roots in water acquisition and plant survival, our understanding of ecosystem vulnerability to drought is primarily based on aboveground impacts. As return intervals between droughts decrease, root responses to one drought might alter responses to subsequent droughts, but this remains unresolved. We conducted a seven-year experiment that imposed extreme drought (growing season precipitation reduced 66%) in a mesic grassland. Plots were droughted during years 1–2 (‘Drought 1'), or years 5–6 (‘Drought 2') or both. We quantified root production during year 6 (final year of Drought 2) and year 7 (first year after Drought 2), when all plots received ambient precipitation. We found that repeated drought decreased root mass production more than twice as much as a single drought (−63% versus −27%, respectively, relative to ambient precipitation). Root mass production of the dominant C4 grass Andropogon gerardii did not decrease significantly with either one or two droughts. A. gerardii root traits differed from subdominant species on average across all treatments, but drought did not alter root traits of either A. gerardii or the subdominant species (collectively). In year 6, root production in plots droughted 4 years ago had not recovered (−21% versus control), but root production recovered in all formerly droughted plots in year 7, when precipitation was above average. Our results highlight the complexity of root responses to drought. Drought-induced reductions in root production can persist for years after drought and repeated drought can reduce production even further, but this does not preclude rapid recovery of root production in a wet year.

Resource-use strategies of woody plants in grassy ecosystems - Wedel, E.R. (Department of Biology, 2023)

Riding out the storm: depleted fat stores and elevated hematocrit in a small bodied endotherm exposed to severe weather - Freeman, N E; Gustafson, M; Hefley, T J; W. A. Boyle (Conservation Physiology, 2023)

Root distributions, precipitation, and soil structure converge to govern soil organic carbon depth distributions - Souza, Ligia F.T.; Hirmas, Daniel R.; Sullivan, Pamela L.; Reuman, Daniel C.; Kirk, Matthew F.; Li, Li; Ajami, Hoori; Wen, Hang; Sarto, Marcos V.M.; Loecke, Terry D.; Rudick, Aoesta K.; C. W. Rice; et al. (Geoderma, 2023)

Seasonal emission factors from rangeland prescribed burns in the Kansas Flint Hills grasslands - Aurell, Johanna; Gullett, Brian; Grier, Gina; Holder, Amara; George, Ingrid (Atmospheric Environment, 2023)

Stronger fertilization effects on aboveground versus belowground plant properties across nine U.S. grasslands - Keller, Adrienne B.; Walter, Christopher A.; Blumenthal, Dana M.; Borer, Elizabeth T.; Collins, Scott L.; DeLancey, Lang C.; Fay, Philip A.; Hofmockel, Kirsten S.; Knops, Johannes M. H.; Leakey, Andrew D. B.; Mayes, Melanie A.; Seabloom, Eric W.; et al. (Ecology, 2023)
Increased nutrient inputs due to anthropogenic activity are expected to increase primary productivity across terrestrial ecosystems, but changes in allocation aboveground versus belowground with nutrient addition have different implications for soil carbon (C) storage. Thus, given that roots are major contributors to soil C storage, understanding belowground net primary productivity (BNPP) and biomass responses to changes in nutrient availability is essential to predicting carbon–climate feedbacks in the context of interacting global environmental changes. To address this knowledge gap, we tested whether a decade of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) fertilization consistently influenced aboveground and belowground biomass and productivity at nine grassland sites spanning a wide range of climatic and edaphic conditions in the continental United States. Fertilization effects were strong aboveground, with both N and P addition stimulating aboveground biomass at nearly all sites (by 30% and 36%, respectively, on average). P addition consistently increased root production (by 15% on average), whereas other belowground responses to fertilization were more variable, ranging from positive to negative across sites. Site-specific responses to P were not predicted by the measured covariates. Atmospheric N deposition mediated the effect of N fertilization on root biomass and turnover. Specifically, atmospheric N deposition was positively correlated with root turnover rates, and this relationship was amplified with N addition. Nitrogen addition increased root biomass at sites with low N deposition but decreased it at sites with high N deposition. Overall, these results suggest that the effects of nutrient supply on belowground plant properties are context dependent, particularly with regard to background N supply rates, demonstrating that site conditions must be considered when predicting how grassland ecosystems will respond to increased nutrient loading from anthropogenic activity.

The synergistic response of primary production in grasslands to combined nitrogen and phosphorus addition is caused by increased nutrient uptake and retention - Vázquez, Eduardo; Borer, Elizabeth T.; Bugalho, Miguel N.; Caldeira, Maria C.; McCulley, Rebecca L.; Risch, Anita C.; Seabloom, Eric W.; Wheeler, George R.; Spohn, Marie (Plant and Soil, 2023)

Thirty years of increased precipitation modifies soil organic matter fractions but not bulk soil carbon and nitrogen in a mesic grassland - Rocci, Katherine S.; Bird, Michael; J. M. Blair; Alan K. Knapp; Liang, Chao; Cotrufo, M. Francesca (Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 2023)

Traits that distinguish dominant species across aridity gradients differ from those that respond to soil moisture - Griffin-Nolan, Robert J.; Felton, Andrew J.; Slette, Ingrid J.; M. D. Smith; Alan K. Knapp (Oecologia, 2023)

Trajectories and state changes of a grassland stream and riparian zone after a decade of woody vegetation removal - Walter K. Dodds; Z. Ratajczak; Keen, Rachel M.; Nippert, J.B.; Grudzinski, Bartosz; Veach, Allison; Taylor, Jeffery H.; Kuhl, Amanda (Ecological Applications, 2023)

Under the weather: mechanisms underlying avian responses to precipitation - Silber, K. M. (Department of Biology, 2023)

Using root and soil traits to forecast woody encroachment dynamics in mesic grassland - Jesse B. Nippert; McCulloh, Kate; Wilcox, Kevin; O'Keefe, Kim; Keen, Rachel; Chen, Anping (2023)

Woody removal experiment on kings creek at konza prairie biological station - Dodds, Walter (The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 2023)

Age-specific patterns of occurrence, density, and growth of two cyprinid fishes in headwater prairie streams - Hedden, S.C.; K. B. Gido (Southwestern Naturalist, 2022)

The amazing diversity of Poaceae: trait variation across space, time, and lineage - Donnelly, Ryan. (Department of Biology, 2022)

Assessing transport and retention of nitrate and other materials through the riparian zone and stream channel with simulated precipitation - W. K. Dodds; Wichman, Gretchen; Guinnip, James P.; Corman, Jessica R.; J. M. Blair (Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2022)

Belowground traits lack response to chronic nitrogen additions in the tallgrass prairie - Gora, Sarah. (Department of Biology, 2022)

Biogeography of root-associated fungi in foundation grasses of North American plains - Rudgers, J.A.; Fox, S.; Porras-Alfaro, A.; Herrera, J.; Reazin, C.; Kent, D.R.; Souza, L.; Chung, Y.A.; Jumpponen, A. (Biogeography, 2022)

Climate change in grassland ecosystems: current impacts and potential actions for a sustainable future - Jesse B. Nippert; Keen, R.M.; Bachle, Seton; Wedel, E.R.; B. Groskinsky (CLIMATE ACTIONS - LOCAL APPLICATIONS AND PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS, 2022)
Grasslands are a widespread and globally important biome providing key ecosystem services, including carbon storage, regulation of the water cycle and diverse assemblages of plant and animal species. Grasslands also provide many important benefits to humans, such as food and forage for livestock. Climate changes manifest as temperature fluctuations, increased intensity of drought and flood cycles and increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. These changes are impacting species growth responses, plant composition and other key grassland processes. In addition to the direct consequences of climate change, secondary (or indirect) impacts of climate change threaten grassland ecosystems. These include changes in land-use and land-cover, agricultural conversion, woody encroachment, invasive species and atmospheric nitrogen deposition. In this chapter, we discuss the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on grasslands generally, while using case studies from specific global grassland types to illustrate key threats and climate change impacts. We specifically provide examples of how direct and indirect climate changes interact, increasing the vulnerability of grasslands. In the final section of this chapter, we outline a climate action plan for grassland ecosystems that includes efforts focused at multiple scales, including the individual, community and global levels. These climate actions can be used to influence policy, reduce the rate of climate change, conserve and restore grasslands and, most importantly, need to begin immediately. Collectively, we explain the general ecological processes in grasslands, illustrate the consequences of climate change on this ecosystem and identify potential solutions to maintain the viability and persistence of grassland ecosystems for the foreseeable future.

Climate legacies and restoration history as drivers of tallgrass prairie carbon and nitrogen cycling - Broderick, C.M. (Department of Biology, 2022)
Keywords: carbon cycling; Climate legacies; Nitrogen cycling; restoration; tallgrass prairie

Climate legacies determine grassland responses to future rainfall regimes - Broderick, C.M.; Wilkins, K.; M. D. Smith; J. M. Blair (Global Change Biology, 2022)

Climate legacy effects shape tallgrass prairie nitrogen cycling - Broderick, C.M.; Freeman, Kiona M.; L.H. Zeglin; J. M. Blair (Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 2022)

Climate variability supersedes grazing to determine the anatomy and physiology of a dominant grassland species - Bachle, Seton.; Nippert, J.B. (Oecologia, 2022)

Comparative phylogeography of small mammals across the Great Plains Suture Zone highlights repeated processes of speciation and community assembly coincident with the 100th meridian - Herrera, Thomas (Department of Biology, 2022)

Cross-site comparisons of climate change on drylands in the US Long-term Ecological Research network - Hudson, Amy R; Peters, D.P.C.; J. M. Blair; Childers, Daniel L; Doran, Peter T; Geil, Kerrie; Gooseff, Michael; Gross, Katherine L; Haddad, Nick M; Pastore, Melissa A; Rudgers, Jennifer A; Sala, Osvaldo; et al. (BioScience, 2022)

Darksidea phi, sp. nov., a dark septate root-associated fungus in foundation grasses in North American Great Plains - Romero-Jiméneza, María-José.; Rudgers, Jennifer A.; Jumpponen, Ari; Herrera, Jose; Hutchinson, Miriam; Kuske, Cheryl; Dunbar, John; Knapp, Dániel G.; Kovács, Gábor M.; Porras-Alfaro, Andrea (Mycologia, 2022)

Data fusion and spatio-temporal approaches to model species distribution - Mohankumar, Narmadha (Department of Statistics, 2022)

Defining, describing, and assessing growth determinacy as a mechanism of plant species codominance - Gray, Jesse E. (Colorado State University, 2022)

Do trade‐offs govern plant species’ responses to different global change treatments? - Langley, J. Adam; Grman, Emily; K.R. Wilcox; M.L. Avolio; Kimberly J. Komatsu; Collins, Scott L.; Koerner, S.E.; M. D. Smith; Baldwin, Andrew H.; Bowman, William; Chiariello, Nona; Eskelinen, Anu; et al. (Ecology, 2022)

Drought impacts on the microbiome in grasslands across the great plains: a story of legacy effects, resistance, and resilience - Vilonen, Leena (Colorado State University, 2022)

The effects of drought on plant and soil microbial communities and functioning during tallgrass prairie restoration - Eckhoff, K.D. (University of Kansas, 2022)

Elevated CO2 counteracts effects of water stress on woody rangeland-encroaching species - O’Connor, R.C.; Blumenthal, Dana M; Ocheltree, Troy W; Nippert, J.B. (Tree Physiology, 2022)

Embracing the dynamic nature of soil structure: A paradigm illuminating the role of life in critical zones of the Anthropocene - Sullivan, P.L.; Billings, S.A.; Hirmas, D.; Li, L.; Zhang, X.; Ziegler, S.; Murenbeeld, K.; Ajami, H.; Guthrie, A.; Singha, K.; Gimenez, D.; Duro, A.; et al. (Earth-Science Reviews, 2022)

Fire as a driver of fungal diversity — A synthesis of current knowledge - Fox, Sam; Sikes, Benjamin A.; Brown, Shawn P.; Cripps, Cathy L.; Glassman, Sydney I.; Hughes, Karen; Semenova-Nelsen, Tatiana; Jumpponen, Ari (Mycologia, 2022)

How and why grasshopper community maturation rates are slowing on a North American tall grass prairie - Kaspari, Michael; A. Joern; Welti, E.A.R. (Biology Letters, 2022)
Invertebrate growth rates have been changing in the Anthropocene. We examine rates of seasonal maturation in a grasshopper community that has been declining annually greater than 2% a year over 34 years. As this grassland has experienced a 1°C increase in temperature, higher plant biomass and lower nutrient densities, the community is maturing more slowly. Community maturation had a nutritional component: declining in years/watersheds with lower plant nitrogen. The effects of fire frequency were consistent with effects of plant nitrogen. Principal components analysis also suggests associated changes in species composition—declines in the densities of grass feeders were associated with declines in community maturation rates. We conclude that slowed maturation rates—a trend counteracted by frequent burning—likely contribute to long-term decline of this dominant herbivore.

Intermittent streamflow generation in a merokarst headwater catchment - Hatley, C.M. (Department of Geology, 2022)

Intra-canopy leaf trait variation facilitates high leaf area index and compensatory growth in a clonal woody-encroaching shrub - Tooley, E. G.; Jesse B. Nippert; Bachle, Seton.; Keen, R.M. (Tree Physiology, 2022)

Kernel weight contribution to yield genetic gain of maize: a global review and US case studies - Fernández, Javier A; Messina, Carlos D; Salinas, Andrea; Prasad, P V Vara; Jesse B. Nippert; Ciampitti, Ignacio A (Journal of Experimental Botany, 2022)

Limited legacy effects of extreme multiyear drought on carbon and nitrogen cycling in a mesic grassland - Vilonen, Leena L.; Blair, J.M.; Trivedi, Pankaj; L.H. Zeglin; M. D. Smith (Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, 2022)
The intensification of drought throughout the U.S. Great Plains has the potential to have large impacts on grassland functioning, as has been shown with dramatic losses of plant productivity annually. Yet, we have a poor understanding of how grassland functioning responds after drought ends. This study examined how belowground nutrient cycling responds after drought and whether legacy effects persist postdrought. We assessed the 2-year recovery of nutrient cycling processes following a 4-year experimental drought in a mesic grassland by comparing two different growing season drought treatments—chronic (each rainfall event reduced by 66%) and intense (all rain eliminated until 45% of annual rainfall was achieved)—to the control (ambient precipitation) treatment. At the beginning of the first growing season postdrought, we found that in situ soil CO2 efflux and laboratory-based soil microbial respiration were reduced by 42% and 22%, respectively, in the intense drought treatment compared to the control, but both measures had recovered by midseason (July) and remained similar to the control treatment in the second postdrought year. We also found that extractable soil ammonium and total inorganic N were elevated throughout the growing season in the first year after drought in the intense treatment. However, these differences in inorganic N pools did not persist during the growing season of the second year postdrought. The remaining measures of C and N cycling in both drought treatments showed no postdrought treatment effects. Thus, although we observed short-term legacy effects following the intense drought, C and N cycling returned to levels comparable to nondroughted grassland within a single growing season regardless of whether the drought was intense or chronic in nature. Overall, these results suggest that the key aspects of C and N cycling in mesic tallgrass prairie do not exhibit persistent legacies from 4 years of experimentally induced drought.

Linking changes in species composition and biomass in a globally distributed grassland experiment - Ladouceur, Emma; Blowes, Shane A.; Chase, Jonathan M.; Clark, Adam T.; Garbowski, Magda; Alberti, Juan; Arnillas, Carlos Alberto; Bakker, Jonathan D.; Barrio, Isabel C.; Bharath, Siddharth; Borer, Elizabeth T.; Brudvig, Lars A.; et al. (Ecology Letters, 2022)

Making sense of multivariate community responses in global change experiments - M.L. Avolio; Kimberly J. Komatsu; Koerner, S.E.; Grman, Emily; Isbell, Forest; Johnson, David S.; K.R. Wilcox; Alatalo, Juha M.; Baldwin, Andrew H.; Beierkuhnlein, Carl; Britton, Andrea J.; Foster, Bryan L.; et al. (Ecosphere, 2022)

Microbial dispersal, including bison dung vectored dispersal, increases soil microbial diversity in a grassland ecosystem - Hawkins, Jaide H.; L.H. Zeglin (Frontiers in Microbiology, 2022)

N and P constrain C in ecosystems under climate change: role of nutrient redistribution, accumulation, and stoichiometry - Rastetter, E.B.; Kwiakowski, B.L.; Kicklighter, D.W.; Barker Plotkin, A.; Genet, H.; Jesse B. Nippert; O'Keefe, K.; Perakis, S.R.; Porder, S.; Roley, S.S.; Reuss, R.W.; Thompson, J.R.; et al. (Ecological Applications, 2022)

Nutrient enrichment increases invertebrate herbivory and pathogen damage in grasslands - Ebeling, Anne; Strauss, Alex T.; Adler, Peter B.; Arnillas, Carlos A.; Barrio, C.; Biederman, Lori A.; Borer, Elizabeth T.; Bugalho, Miguel N.; Caldeira, C.; Cadotte, Marc W.; Daleo, Pedro; Eisenhauer, Nico; et al. (Journal of Ecology, 2022)

Nutrient identity modifies the destabilising effects of eutrophication in grasslands - Carroll, Oliver; Batzer, Evan; Bharath, Siddharth; Borer, Elizabeth T.; Campana, ía; Esch, Ellen; Hautier, Yann; Ohlert, Timothy; Seabloom, Eric W.; Adler, Peter B.; Bakker, Jonathan D.; Biederman, Lori; et al. (Ecology Letters, 2022)
Nutrient enrichment can simultaneously increase and destabilise plant biomass production, with co-limitation by multiple nutrients potentially intensifying these effects. Here, we test how factorial additions of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium with essential nutrients (K+) affect the stability (mean/standard deviation) of aboveground biomass in 34 grasslands over 7 years. Destabilisation with fertilisation was prevalent but was driven by single nutrients, not synergistic nutrient interactions. On average, N-based treatments increased mean biomass production by 21–51% but increased its standard deviation by 40–68% and so consistently reduced stability. Adding P increased interannual variability and reduced stability without altering mean biomass, while K+ had no general effects. Declines in stability were largest in the most nutrient-limited grasslands, or where nutrients reduced species richness or intensified species synchrony. We show that nutrients can differentially impact the stability of biomass production, with N and P in particular disproportionately increasing its interannual variability.

Nutrients and herbivores impact grassland stability across spatial scales through different pathways - Chen, Qingqing; Wang, Shaopeng; Seabloom, E.W.; MacDougall, A.S.; Borer, E.T.; Bakker, Jonathan D.; Donohue, Ian.; Knops, J.M.H.; Morgan, J.W.; Carroll, Oliver.; Crawley, M.; Bugalho, M.N.; et al. (28, 2022)
Nutrients and herbivores are well-known drivers of grassland diversity and stability in local communities. However, whether they interact to impact the stability of aboveground biomass and whether these effects depend on spatial scales remain unknown. It is also unclear whether nutrients and herbivores impact stability via different facets of plant diversity including species richness, evenness, and changes in community composition through time and space. We used a replicated experiment adding nutrients and excluding herbivores for 5 years in 34 global grasslands to explore these questions. We found that both nutrient addition and herbivore exclusion alone reduced stability at the larger spatial scale (aggregated local communities; gamma stability), but through different pathways. Nutrient addition reduced gamma stability primarily by increasing changes in local community composition over time, which was mainly driven by species replacement. Herbivore exclusion reduced gamma stability primarily by decreasing asynchronous dynamics among local communities (spatial asynchrony). Their interaction weakly increased gamma stability by increasing spatial asynchrony. Our findings indicate that disentangling the processes operating at different spatial scales may improve conservation and management aiming at maintaining the ability of ecosystems to reliably provide functions and services for humanity.

Partitioning evapotranspiration in a tallgrass prairie using micrometeorological and water use efficiency approaches under contrasting rainfall regimes - da Rocha, Adolpho Emanuel Quintela; Santos, Eduardo Alvarez; Patrignani, Andres (Journal of Hydrology, 2022)

Poor relationships between NEON Airborne Observation Platform data and field‐based vegetation traits at a mesic grassland - Pau, Stephanie; Jesse B. Nippert; Slapikas, Ryan; Griffith, D.; Bachle, Seton; Helliker, Brent R.; O’Connor, R.C.; Riley, William J.; Still, Christopher J.; Zaricor, Marissa (Ecology, 2022)

Post-silking 15N labelling reveals an enhanced nitrogen allocation to leaves in modern maize (Zea mays) genotypes - Fernandez, Javier A.; Jesse B. Nippert; Prasad, P.V. Vara; Messina, Carlos D.; Ciampitti, Ignacio A. (Journal of Plant Physiology, 2022)

Prairie stream metabolism recovery varies based on antecedent hydrology across a stream network after a bank‐full flood - Ruffing, Claire M.; Veach, A.M.; Schechner, Anne; Rüegg, Janine; Trentman, Matt T.; W. K. Dodds (Limnology and Oceanography, 2022)

Precipitation effects on nematode diversity and carbon footprint across grasslands - Franco, André L.C.; Guan, Pingting; Cui, Shuyan; Tomasel, Cecilia M.; Gherardi, Laureano A.; Sala, O.E.; Wall, Diana H. (Global Change Biology, 2022)

Precipitation, not land use, primarily determines the composition of both plant and phyllosphere fungal communities - Dea, Hannah I.; Urban, Abigail; Kazarina, Anna; Houseman, Gregory R.; Thomas, Samantha G.; Loecke, Terry; Greer, Mitchell J.; Platt, Thomas G.; Lee, Sonny; A. Jumpponen (Frontiers in Fungal Biology, 2022)

Predation, parasitism, and drought counteract the benefits of patch-burn grazing for the reproductive success of grassland songbirds - Verheijen, B.H.F.; Erickson, Amy N; W.A. Boyle; Leveritte, Kiana S; Sojka, Jennifer L; Spahr, Lauren A; Williams, Emily J; Winnicki, Sarah K; Sandercock, B.K. (Ornithological Applications, 2022)

Reciprocal transplant gardens as gold standard to detect local adaptation in grassland species: New opportunities moving into the 21st century - Johnson, Loretta C.; Galliart, Matthew B.; Alsdurf, Jacob D.; Maricle, Brian R.; S.G. Baer; Bello, Nora M.; Gibson, David J.; Smith, A.B. (Journal of Ecology, 2022)

Reintroducing bison results in long-running and resilient increases in grassland diversity - Ratajczak, Z.; S.L Collins; J. M. Blair; Koerner, S.E.; Louthan, A.M.; M. D. Smith; Taylor, J.H.; Jesse B. Nippert (PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 2022)
The widespread extirpation of megafauna may have destabilized ecosystems and altered biodiversity globally. Most megafauna extinctions occurred before the modern record, leaving it unclear how their loss impacts current biodiversity. We report the long-term effects of reintroducing plains bison (Bison bison) in a tallgrass prairie versus two land uses that commonly occur in many North American grasslands: 1) no grazing and 2) intensive growing-season grazing by domesticated cattle (Bos taurus). Compared to ungrazed areas, reintroducing bison increased native plant species richness by 103% at local scales (10 m2) and 86% at the catchment scale. Gains in richness continued for 29 y and were resilient to the most extreme drought in four decades. These gains are now among the largest recorded increases in species richness due to grazing in grasslands globally. Grazing by domestic cattle also increased native plant species richness, but by less than half as much as bison. This study indicates that some ecosystems maintain a latent potential for increased native plant species richness following the reintroduction of native herbivores, which was unmatched by domesticated grazers. Native-grazer gains in richness were resilient to an extreme drought, a pressure likely to become more common under future global environmental change.

Response and recovery of grassland plant communities exposed to multiyear drought differs across a precipitation gradient - Ross, Maggie. (Colorado State University, 2022)

Root traits reveal safety and efficiency differences in grasses and shrubs exposed to different fire regimes - O'Keefe, Kimberly; Bachle, Seton; Keen, Rachel; Tooley, E. Greg; Jesse B. Nippert (Functional Ecology, 2022)

Shifting seasonal patterns of water availability: ecosystem responses to an unappreciated dimension of climate change - Hajek, O.L.; Alan K. Knapp (New Phytologist, 2022)
Seasonal patterns of water availability can differ dramatically among ecosystems, with well-known consequences for ecosystem structure and functioning. Less appreciated is that climate change can shift the seasonality of water availability (e.g. to wetter springs, drier summers), resulting in both subtle and profound ecological impacts. Here we (1) review evidence that the seasonal availability of water is being altered in ecosystems worldwide, (2) explore several mechanisms potentially driving these changes, and (3) highlight the breadth of ecological consequences resulting from shifts in the seasonality of water availability. We conclude that seasonal patterns of water availability are changing globally, but in regionally specific ways requiring more rigorous and nuanced assessments of ecosystem vulnerability as well as the ecological consequences.

Simple statistical models can be sufficient for testing hypotheses with population time‐series data - Wenger, S.J.; Stowe, E.S.; K. B. Gido; Freeman. M.C.; Kanno, Y.; Franssen, N.R.; Olden, Julian D.; Poff, N.L.; Walters, A.W.; Bumpers, P.M.; Mims, M.C.; Hooten, M.B.; et al. (Ecology and Evolution, 2022)
Time-series data offer wide-ranging opportunities to test hypotheses about the physical and biological factors that influence species abundances. Although sophisticated models have been developed and applied to analyze abundance time series, they require information about species detectability that is often unavailable. We propose that in many cases, simpler models are adequate for testing hypotheses. We consider three relatively simple regression models for time series, using simulated and empirical (fish and mammal) datasets. Model A is a conventional generalized linear model of abundance, model B adds a temporal autoregressive term, and model C uses an estimate of population growth rate as a response variable, with the option of including a term for density dependence. All models can be fit using Bayesian and non-Bayesian methods. Simulation results demonstrated that model C tended to have greater support for long-lived, lower-fecundity organisms (K life-history strategists), while model A, the simplest, tended to be supported for shorter-lived, high-fecundity organisms (r life-history strategists). Analysis of real-world fish and mammal datasets found that models A, B, and C each enjoyed support for at least some species, but sometimes yielded different insights. In particular, model C indicated effects of predictor variables that were not evident in analyses with models A and B. Bayesian and frequentist models yielded similar parameter estimates and performance. We conclude that relatively simple models are useful for testing hypotheses about the factors that influence abundance in time-series data, and can be appropriate choices for datasets that lack the information needed to fit more complicated models. When feasible, we advise fitting datasets with multiple models because they can provide complementary information.

Soil carbon stocks in temperate grasslands differ strongly across sites but are insensitive to decade‐long fertilization - Keller, Adrienne B.; Borer, Elizabeth T.; S L Collins; DeLancey, Lang C.; Fay, Philip A.; Hofmockel, Kirsten S.; Leakey, Andrew D.B.; Mayes, Melanie A.; Seabloom, Eric W.; Walter, Christopher A.; Wang, Yong; Zhao, Qian; et al. (Global Change Biology, 2022)

The unique canopy structure, leaf morphology, and physiology of Cornus drummondii - Tooley, E. G (Department of Biology, 2022)

Anatomical constraints on grass physiological responses depend on water availability - Bachle, Seton (Department of Biology, 2021)

Assessing linkages between small impoundments and long-term trajectories of prairie stream fish assemblages - Hedden, Skyler C.; Lindsey A. Bruckerhoff; K. B. Gido (The American Midland Naturalist, 2021)

A conservation and taxonomic assessment of the least shrew (Cryptotis parvus) complex through rangewide phylogeographic analyses and population genomics - Galfano, Thomas. (Division of Biology, 2021)

Consumer roles of small mammals within fragmented native tallgrass prairie - Hope, A.G.; Gragg, S.F.; Nippert, J.B.; Combe, F.J. (Ecosphere, 2021)
Grassland ecosystems globally are being negatively impacted by changes in climate, disturbance regimes, nutrient flux, and consumer guilds. Changes in the trophic ecology of consumers can substantially influence local resources, contributing to shifting diversity, community turnover, and other processes of ecosystem change. Small mammals are diverse and abundant within grasslands and yet the impact of changing ecosystems on small mammals and the role of these mammals as consumers are still both under‐studied. We assessed small mammal resource use within grassland and woodland vegetation types that have resulted from landscape‐scale experimental disturbance through fire treatments within the tallgrass prairie ecoregion of the North American Great Plains. We predicted that resource use would vary significantly among grassland vs. woodland communities, in turn reducing the role of small mammals in contributing to future maintenance of native prairies. We sampled five dominant species of rodents across three years and multiple habitats. Using stable isotope analysis, we investigated isotopic niche area and overlap to infer variation in diet, both within and among species. Resource use shifted in bivariate isotopic space seasonally but not across years when combining all species and habitats. Inferred spring diet (based on fur samples) was highly diverse and overlapping. Summer isotopic values (based on liver tissue) in woody habitat treatments were narrower and overlapped less than within grassland habitats. Consumers generally shifted from C4 herbivory to C3 herbivory, or greater omnivory, when analyzing grassland, shrubland, and woodland habitats respectively. Within the tallgrass prairie ecosystem, small mammal populations in herbaceous‐dominated habitats use a broader variety of resources than small mammals in proximate woody‐dominated habitats. As native grasslands experience woody encroachment, small mammal assemblages experience turnover of dominant species and associated changes in diet. Ecosystem changes such as cessation of frequent fire resulting in more woody habitats may include reduced roles by native small mammals as consumers/dispersers/propagators of native grassland plants.

Cultural conformity and persistence in Dickcissel song are higher in locations in which males show high site fidelity - Parker, Timothy H; Sousa, Bridget; Leu, Stephan T; Edmondson, Stacy; Foo, Cecily; Strauss, Amy; Kahl, Hanna; Ballinger, Kristen; Ross, Eric; ße Ruse, Mareile; Sandsten, Maria; Verheijen, Bram H F; et al. (Ornithology, 2021)

Deconstructing precipitation variability: rainfall event size and timing uniquely alter ecosystem dynamics - Griffin-Nolan, R.J.; Slette, I.J.; Alan K. Knapp (Journal of Ecology, 2021)
Water-limited ecosystems are highly sensitive to not only precipitation amount, but also precipitation pattern, particularly variability in the size and timing of growing season rainfall events. Both rainfall event size and timing are expected to be altered by climate change, but the relative responses of dryland ecosystems to changes in rainfall event size vs. timing has not been resolved. Here, we disentangle the effects of these different aspects of precipitation pattern on ecosystem dynamics. We experimentally assessed how these two aspects of rainfall variability impacted a semi-arid grassland ecosystem by altering an ambient precipitation pattern to eliminate variability in (1) rainfall event size (all events were made the same size), (2) rainfall event timing (all events were uniformly spaced in time), and (3) both. Total precipitation amount was constant for all treatments. We measured responses of soil moisture, ecosystem carbon flux (e.g., net primary production and soil CO2 flux), plant community composition, and physiological responses of the dominant C4 grass, Bouteloua gracilis. Removing variability in rainfall event size altered ecosystem dynamics more than a pattern of uniform event timing, but the largest impact occurred when variability in both were removed. Notably, eliminating variability in both event size and timing increased aboveground net primary productivity by 23%, consistent with reduced water stress in the dominant C4 grass, while also reducing seasonal variability in soil CO2 flux by 35%, reflecting lower seasonal variability in soil moisture. Synthesis: Unique responses to different aspects of precipitation variability highlight the complexity of predicting how dryland ecosystems will be affected by climate change induced shifts in rainfall patterns. Our results provide novel support for the key roles of rainfall event size and timing, in addition to total precipitation amount, as determinants of ecosystem function.

Deepening roots can enhance carbonate weathering by amplifying CO2-rich recharge - Wen, H.; Sullivan, P.L.; Macpherson, G.L.; Billings, S.A.; Li, L. (Biogeosciences, 2021)

Defining codominance in plant communities - Gray, J.E.; Kimberly J. Komatsu; M.D. Smith (New Phytologist, 2021)
Species dominance and biodiversity in plant communities have received considerable attention and characterisation. However, species codominance, while often alleged, is seldom defined or quantified. Codominance is a common phenomenon and is likely to be an important driver of community structure, ecosystem function and the stability of both. Here we review the use of the term ‘codominance’ and find inconsistencies in its use, suggesting that the scientific community currently lacks a universal understanding of codominance. We address this issue by: (1) qualitatively defining codominance as mostly shared abundance that is distinctively isolated within a subset of a community, and (2) presenting a novel metric for quantifying the degree to which relative abundances are shared among a codominant subset of plant species, while also accounting for the remaining species within a plant community. Using both simulated and real‐world data, we then demonstrate the process of applying the codominance metric to compare communities and to generate a quantitatively defensible subset of species to consider codominant within a community. We show that our metric effectively distinguishes the degree of codominance between four types of grassland ecosystems as well as simulated ecosystems with varying degrees of abundance sharing among community members. Overall, we make the case that increased research focusses on the conditions under which codominance occurs and the consequences for species coexistence, community structure and ecosystem function that would considerably advance the fields of community and ecosystem ecology.

Determinants of community compositional change are equally affected by global change - M.L. Avolio; Kimberly J. Komatsu; S.L Collins; Grman, Emily; Koerner, S.E.; Tredennick, A.T.; Wilcox, K.R.; Baer, S.G.; E.H. Boughton; Britton, Andrea J.; Foster, Bryan; Gough, Laura; et al. (Ecology Letters, 2021)
Global change is impacting plant community composition, but the mechanisms underlying these changes are unclear. Using a dataset of 58 global change experiments, we tested the five fundamental mechanisms of community change: changes in evenness and richness, reordering, species gains and losses. We found 71% of communities were impacted by global change treatments, and 88% of communities that were exposed to two or more global change drivers were impacted. Further, all mechanisms of change were equally likely to be affected by global change treatments—species losses and changes in richness were just as common as species gains and reordering. We also found no evidence of a progression of community changes, for example, reordering and changes in evenness did not precede species gains and losses. We demonstrate that all processes underlying plant community composition changes are equally affected by treatments and often occur simultaneously, necessitating a wholistic approach to quantifying community changes.

Differential resilience of soil microbes and ecosystem functions following cessation of long-term fertilization - Nieland, M.A.; P. Moley; J. Hanschu; L.H. Zeglin (Ecosystems, 2021)
Nitrogen (N) from anthropogenic sources has dramatically increased in terrestrial ecosystems globally. Although belowground microbial processes and events that release N into the atmosphere, such as fire, could support ecosystem resilience to eutrophication, little is known about how these factors might affect N loss following chronic fertilization, thus promoting ecosystem recovery. We studied how N pools, N-cycling potential rates and their affiliated microbial populations, and microbial community composition responded to the factorial effects of cessation of 30 years of chronic N fertilization and annual burning at a tallgrass prairie. Soil N availability in previously fertilized plots recovered by 86% (using never-fertilized control plots as a 100% recovery reference), while plant and microbial biomass did not change. Nitrification potential recovered (80%), and denitrification potential partially recovered (50%), in previously fertilized plots. There were differential responses among key groups of nitrifiers (archaea vs. bacteria) and denitrifiers (nosZ clade I vs. clade II from Anaeromyxobacter dehalogenans) to long-term N fertilization and cessation despite the whole microbial community composition not shifting significantly after fertilization ceased. Also, N-cycling potentials were consistently higher in unburned prairie. Together, results suggest that fire is a prominent mechanism for ecosystem N removal in annually burned prairie, while N-cycling microbes will have an important role in the absence of fire; however, the recovery to pre-fertilized condition, with or without fire, will take longer than 1 year. Overall, differential resilience of biotic populations and processes can potentially shape different outcomes of soil N loss and tallgrass prairie ecosystem recovery from long-term N fertilization.

Direct and indirect drivers of grassland bird population declines and settlement decisions over broad spatial and temporal scales - Smith, E.B. (Department of Biology, 2021)

Disentangling effects of predators and landscape factors as drivers of stream fish community structure - Lindsey A. Bruckerhoff; K. B. Gido; Estey, Michael; Moore, P.J. (Freshwater Biology, 2021)

Do fine‐scale experiments underestimate predator consumption rates? - Lindsey A. Bruckerhoff; Pennock, C.A.; K. B. Gido (Journal of Animal Ecology, 2021)

Is a drought a drought in grasslands? Productivity responses to different types of drought - Carroll, C.J.W.; Slette, I.J.; Griffin-Nolan, R.J.; Baur, L.E.; Hoffman, A.M.; Denton, E.M.; Gray, J.E.; Post, A.K.; Johnston, M.K.; Yu, Q.; Collins, S.L.; Luo, Y.; et al. (Oecologia, 2021)

Effects of compounded precipitation pattern intensification and drought occur belowground in a mesic grassland - Slette, I.J.; J. M. Blair; Fay, P.A.; M. D. Smith; Alan K. Knapp (Ecosystems, 2021)
Climate change is altering precipitation regimes globally, with expectations of intensified precipitation patterns (for example, larger but fewer rainfall events) and more frequent and extreme drought. Both aspects of precipitation change can impact ecosystem function individually, but it is more likely that they will occur in combination. In a central US mesic grassland, we imposed an extreme 2-year drought (growing season precipitation reduced by 66%) on plots with a long-term (16-year) history of exposure to either ambient or intensified precipitation patterns (average threefold increase in event size and threefold decrease in event number during the growing season). While this intensified pattern did not alter total precipitation amount, it generally led to ecosystem responses consistent with a drier environment (for example, reduced soil moisture, aboveground net primary production (ANPP), and soil CO2 flux, but little evidence for altered root biomass). Surprisingly, this history of intensified precipitation patterns did not affect the response of ANPP to the subsequent extreme drought. In contrast, previous exposure to intensified precipitation patterns reduced root production and muted soil CO2 flux responses to rainfall events during drought. Reduced root production in plots experiencing compounded precipitation extremes was driven not by the dominant C4 grass species, Andropogon gerardii, but collectively by the subdominant species in the plant community. Overall, our results reveal that compound changes in precipitation patterns and amount affected this grassland in ways that were less apparent (that is, belowground) than responses to either change individually and significantly reduced ecosystem carbon uptake.

Experimental drought re‐ordered assemblages of root‐associated fungi across North American grasslands - Lagueux, Devon; A. Jumpponen; Porras-Alfaro, A.; Herrera, Jose; Chung, Y. Anny; Baur, Lauren E.; M. D. Smith; Alan K. Knapp; S L Collins; Rudgers, Jennifer A. (Journal of Ecology, 2021)

Fate of CO2 in tallgrass prairie watershed underlain by merokarst bedrock, Konza Prairie, Kansas, USA - Andrews, Katherine (Department of Geology, 2021)

Fire and browsing interact to alter intra-clonal stem dynamics of an encroaching shrub in tallgrass prairie - Wedel, E.R.; Nippert, J.B.; D.C. Hartnett (Oecologia, 2021)
The expansion of woody species into grasslands has altered community structure and ecosystem function of grasslands worldwide. In tallgrass prairie of the Central Great Plains, USA, decreased fire frequency and intensity have increased the cover and abundance of woody species. In particular, clonal shrub cover has increased at accelerated rates due to vegetative reproduction and resprouting after disturbance. We measured the intra-clonal stem demography and relative growth rates (estimated change in woody biomass) of the shrub Cornus drummondii in response to fire frequency (4 vs 20year burn intervals) and simulated browsing during the 2018 and 2019 growing seasons at Konza Prairie Biological Station (Manhattan, Kansas). Overall, infrequent fire (4year burn interval) increased intra-clonal stem relative growth rates and shrub relative growth rates. Intra-clonal stem relative growth rates were reduced in unbrowsed clones in 2018 due to drought and simu-lated browsing reduced intra-clonal stem relative growth rates in 2019. Additionally, simulated browsing nearly eliminated flower production within clones but did not affect intra-clonal stem mortality or recruitment within a growing season. Fire in conjunction with simulated browsing reduced estimated relative growth rates for entire shrub clones. Browsed shrubs that experienced prescribed fire in 2017 had reduced intra-clonal stem densities compared to unbrowsed shrubs and stem densities of browsed shrubs did not recover in 2018 or 2019. These results illustrate that infrequent fire alone promotes the expansion of clonal shrubs in tallgrass prairie and multiple interacting disturbances (e.g., fire and browsing) are required to control the spread of clonal shrubs into grasslands.

Fire frequency, state change and hysteresis in tallgrass prairie - Collins, Scott L.; Nippert, J.B.; Blair, J. M.; J. M. Briggs; Blackmore, P.; Ratajczak, Zak (Ecology Letters, 2021)
Hysteresis is a fundamental characteristic of alternative stable state theory, yet evidence of hysteresis is rare. In mesic grasslands, fire frequency regulates transition from grass‐ to shrub‐dominated system states. It is uncertain, however, if increasing fire frequency can reverse shrub expansion, or if grass‐shrub dynamics exhibit hysteresis. We implemented annual burning in two infrequently burned grasslands and ceased burning in two grasslands burned annually. With annual fires, grassland composition converged on that of long‐term annually burned vegetation due to rapid recovery of grass cover, although shrubs persisted. When annual burning ceased, shrub cover increased, but community composition did not converge with a long‐term infrequently burned reference site because of stochastic and lagged dispersal by shrubs, reflecting hysteresis. Our results demonstrated that annual burning can slow, but not reverse, shrub encroachment. In addition, reversing fire frequencies resulted in hysteresis because vegetation trajectories from grassland to shrubland differed from those of shrubland to grassland.

Fire history as a key determinant of grassland soil CO2 flux - Slette, Ingrid J.; Liebert, Alannah; Alan K. Knapp (Plant and Soil, 2021)
Keywords: aboveground net primary production; carbon cycling; ecosystem; fire; grassland; soil CO2 flux; soil respiration

How and why plant ionomes vary across North American grasslands and its implications for herbivore abundance - Kaspari, Michael; Beurs, Kirsten M.; Welti, E.A.R. (Ecology, 2021)

How long do population level field experiments need to be? Utilising data from the 40‐year‐old LTER network - Cusser, Sarah; Helms, Jackson; Bahlai, Christie A.; Haddad, Nick M. (Ecology Letters, 2021)

Impacts of compound precipitation extremes on belowground dynamics in a mesic grassland - Slette, I.J. (Colorado State University, 2021)

Increasing effects of chronic nutrient enrichment on plant diversity loss and ecosystem productivity over time - Seabloom, E.W.; Adler, P.B.; Alberti, J.; Biederman, L.; Buckley, Y.M.; Cadotte, M.W.; S.L Collins; Dee, L.; Fay, P.A.; Firn, J.; Hagenah, N.; Harpole, W. S.; et al. (Ecology, 2021)
Human activities are enriching many of Earth’s ecosystems with biologically limiting mineral nutrients such as nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). In grasslands, this enrichment generally reduces plant diversity and increases productivity. The widely demonstrated positive effect of diversity on productivity suggests a potential negative feedback, whereby nutrient‐induced declines in diversity reduce the initial gains in productivity arising from nutrient enrichment. In addition, plant productivity and diversity can be inhibited by accumulations of dead biomass, which may be altered by nutrient enrichment. Over longer timeframes, nutrient addition may increase soil fertility by increasing soil organic matter and nutrient pools. We examined the effects of 5‐11 years of nutrient addition at 47 grasslands in twelve countries. Nutrient enrichment increased aboveground live biomass and reduced plant diversity at nearly all sites, and these effects became stronger over time. We did not find evidence that nutrient‐induced losses of diversity reduced the positive effects of nutrients on biomass, however nutrient effects on live biomass increased more slowly at sites where litter was also increasing, regardless of plant diversity. This work suggests that short‐term experiments may underestimate the long‐term nutrient enrichment effects on global, grassland ecosystems.

Lateral bedrock erosion and valley formation in a heterogeneously layered landscape, Northeast Kansas - Marcotte, A.L.; Neudorf, C.M.; Langston, A.L. (Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 2021)
In this study, we present direct field measurements of modern lateral and vertical bedrock erosion during a 2-year study period, and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages of fluvial material capping a flat bedrock surface at Kings Creek located in northeast Kansas, USA. These data provide insight into rates and mechanisms of bedrock erosion and valley-widening in a heterogeneously layered limestone-shale landscape. Lateral bedrock erosion outpaced vertical incision during our 2-year study period. Modern erosion rates, measured at erosion pins in limestone and shale bedrock reveal that shale erosion rate is a function of wetting and drying cycles, while limestone erosion rate is controlled by discharge and fracture spacing. Variability in fracture spacing amongst field sites controls the size of limestone block collapse into the stream, which either allowed continued lateral erosion following rapid detachment and transport of limestone blocks, or inhibited lateral erosion due to limestone blocks that protected the valley wall from further erosion. The OSL ages of fluvial material sourced from the strath terrace were older than any material previously dated at our study site and indicate that Kings Creek was actively aggrading and incising throughout the late Pleistocene. Coupling field measurements and observations with ages of fluvial terraces can be useful to investigate the timing and processes linked to how bedrock rivers erode laterally over time to form wide bedrock valleys.

Mechanisms influencing physically sequestered soil carbon in temperate restored grasslands in South Africa and North America - Scott, D.A.; Bach, Elizabeth M.; Du Preez, Chris C.; Six, Johan; Baer, S.G. (Biogeochemistry, 2021)
Sequestering carbon (C) into stable soil pools has potential to mitigate increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Carbon accrues in grassland soil restored from cultivation, but the amount of physically protected C (here measured as microaggregate-within-macroaggregate C) and predominant mechanisms of accrual are not well understood. We modeled the rate of physically protected carbon accrued in three mesic temperate perennial restored grasslands from cross-continental regions using datasets with a wide range of restoration ages from northeast Kansas, USA; southeast Nebraska, USA; and northeast Free State, South Africa. Further, we investigated major controls on the amount of physically protected C in each site using structural equation modeling. Variables in the structural equation model were root biomass, root C:N ratio, soil structure (indicated by bulk density, percent of macroaggregates on a per whole soil mass basis, and percent of microaggregate-within-macroaggregates on a per macroaggregate mass basis), microbial composition (indicated by microbial biomass C, total phospholipid fatty acid [PLFA] biomass, and PLFA biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizae fungi [AMF] biomass), and microaggregate-within-macroaggregate C on a per whole soil mass basis. Across all sites, physically protected C accrued at a rate of 16 ± 5 g m−2 year−1. Data from South Africa fit an a priori metamodel developed for northeast KS that hypothesized physically protected C could be explained as a function of microbial composition, soil structure, root C:N ratio, and root biomass (listed in order of strength of direct effect on physically protected C). In contrast to the model-based hypothesis, root C:N ratio was the strongest influence (negative) on physically protected C in South Africa. The lesser effect of AMF on physically protected C in South Africa was consistent with lower AMF biomass in arid environments. The hypothesized model did not fit southeast Nebraska data possibly due to high (~ 30%) clay content. Overall, these results suggest that physically protected C in soil with moderate amounts of clay (more than 10% and less than 30%) can be predicted with knowledge of roots (biomass and C:N ratio), microbial biomass, and soil aggregation.

A multi-locus perspective reveals connections between island biogeography and evolutionary history of an endangered shrew (Sorex pribilofensis) - Wiens, Benjamin J. (Division of Biology, 2021)

Negative effects of nitrogen override positive effects of phosphorus on grassland legumes worldwide - Tognetti, Pedro M.; Prober, Suzanne M.; Báez, Selene; Chaneton, Enrique J.; Firn, Jennifer; Risch, Anita C.; Schuetz, Martin; Simonsen, Anna K.; Yahdjian, Laura; Borer, Elizabeth T.; Seabloom, Eric W.; Arnillas, Carlos Alberto; et al. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021)

Patterns and trends of organic matter processing and transport: Insights from the US Long-Term Ecological Research network - Harms, Tamara K.; Groffman, Peter M.; Aluwihare, Lihini; Craft, Chris; Wieder, William R; Hobbie, Sarah E.; S.G. Baer; J. M. Blair; Frey, Serita; Remucal, Christina K.; Rudgers, Jennifer A.; S L Collins (Climate Change Ecology, 2021)

Plant diversity and litter accumulation mediate the loss of foliar endophyte fungal richness following nutrient addition - Henning, Jeremiah A.; Kinkel, Linda; May, Georgiana; Lumibao, Candice Y.; Seabloom, Eric W.; Borer, Elizabeth T. (Ecology, 2021)

Plant legacies and soil microbial community dynamics control soil respiration - Connell, R. Kent; L.H. Zeglin; J. M. Blair (Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 2021)

Precipitation manipulation and terrestrial carbon cycling: The roles of treatment magnitude, experimental duration and local climate - Wang, Jinsong; Tian, Dashuan; Alan K. Knapp; Chen, Han Y. H.; Luo, Yiqi; Li, Zhaolei; Hou, Enqing; Huang, Xinzhao; Jiang, Lifen; Niu, Shuli (Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2021)

Precipitation–productivity relationships and the duration of precipitation anomalies: An underappreciated dimension of climate change - Felton, A.J.; Alan K. Knapp; M. D. Smith (Global Change Biology, 2021)

Is a prescribed fire sufficient to slow the spread of woody plants in an infrequently burned grassland? A case study in tallgrass prairie - Nippert, J.B.; Telleria, Lizeth; Blackmore, Pamela; Taylor, Jeffrey H.; O'Connor, Rory C. (Rangeland Ecology & Management, 2021)
In many mesic grasslands, such as the central Great Plains in North America, frequent fire is a key regulator of ecological processes. Long periods of infrequent fire facilitate the conversion of herbaceous-dominated grassland to woody-dominated shrubland or woodland. At the Konza Prairie Biological Station in northeast Kansas, one infrequently burned portion of the landscape has undergone transformation from grassland to woodland after nearly 30 yr without fire. In Spring 2017, a prescribed burn was implemented to assess fire effectiveness on woody plant mortality. A postfire census of 3 000+ individual woody plants identified the distribution of species by size (height), topographic position, and slope on the landscape. Mortality and canopy fire damage were calculated for each individual. In lowland locations with near-continuous shrub cover (30.7% of the landscape), woody plants were unaffected by fire. However, in upland and slope locations, where shrubs and trees were sparser, survival probability varied by topographic position and species. In these locations 68% of all woody individuals experienced 90% or greater fire damage to the canopy, with 56% of these individuals exhibiting new canopy regrowth within 2 mo after the fire. The two most abundant woody shrubs, Cornus drummondii and Rhus aromatica, showed high survival at all height classes and landscape positions. The two abundant tree species, Gleditsia triacanthos and Juniperus virginiana, showed increased survival probability with tree height that varied by landscape position. Survival of J. virginiana also varied according to proximity and size of neighboring clonal shrubs, providing a mechanism for persistence of this fire-sensitive tree species even at small height classes. The probability survival curves developed here are useful for managers assessing when to prescribe fire to maximize mortality for J. virginiana and provide insight relevant for broader ecological understanding of woody encroachment within grasslands throughout the world.

Regal fritillary (Speyeria idalia) sex ratio in tallgrass prairie: Effects of survey timing and management regime - McCullough, K.; Haukos, D.A.; Albanese, G. (The American Midland Naturalist, 2021)
The regal fritillary, Speyeria idalia (Drury), was once a common inhabitant of North American grassland communities. Regal fritillary populations are commonly reported to have a male biased adult sex ratio (ASR) throughout their range. We assessed the observed ASR of regal fritillary throughout an annual flight period, investigated how the overall density of both sexes changed, and tested effects of prescribed fire, grazing and haying management treatments on male and female density. We found that regal fritillary exhibited an observed 2:1 male biased ASR across the entire emergence period. Our analysis also revealed that male density peaked earlier than female density in the flight period. Point estimates of density indicated sites that received prescribed burning at the moderate fire-return interval supported ≥1.3 times greater density of males and ≥5.6 times greater density of females versus sites burned with short and long fire-return intervals. Additionally, this effect was enhanced when combined with grazing which showed males were ≥1.9 times and females had ≥1.2 times greater point estimates of density in sites that were grazed and burned at a moderate fire-return interval versus other sites. The relatively stable status of regal fritillary within our study region suggests that a 2:1 male to female ASR may be considered the model composition of populations throughout their range. Likewise, the dynamic nature of the ASR throughout the flight period highlights the importance of conducting surveys across the flight period. Finally, these results corroborate an increasing number of research results that reveal common prairie management practices, such as prescribed fire can be applied within sites that contain regal fritillary and continue to support stable populations.

Resources do not limit compensatory response of a tallgrass prairie plant community to the loss of a dominant species - Chaves, Francis A.; M. D. Smith (Journal of Ecology, 2021)

RivFishTIME: A global database of fish time‐series to study global change ecology in riverine systems - Comte, Lise; Carvajal, Juan; Tedesco, Pablo A.; Giam, Xingli; Brose, Ulrich; Erős, Tibor; Filipe, Ana F.; Fortin, Marie-Josée; Irving, Katie; Jacquet, Claire; Larsen, Stefano; Sharma, Sapna; et al. (Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2021)

Seasonal changes in GPP/SIF ratios and their climatic determinants across the Northern Hemisphere - Chen, Anping; Mao, Jiafu; Ricciuto, Daniel; Lu, Dan; Xiao, Jingfeng; Li, Xing; Thornton, Peter E.; Alan K. Knapp (Global Change Biology, 2021)

SoDaH: the SOils DAta Harmonization database, an open-source synthesis of soil data from research networks, version 1.0 - Wieder, William R.; Pierson, Derek; Earl, Stevan; Lajtha, Kate; S.G. Baer; Ballantyne, Ford; Berhe, Asmeret Asefaw; Billings, Sharon A.; Brigham, Laurel M.; Chacon, Stephany S.; Fraterrigo, Jennifer; Frey, Serita D.; et al. (Earth System Science Data, 2021)

Sodium addition increases leaf herbivory and fungal damage across four grasslands - Welti, E.A.R.; Kaspari, Michael (Functional Ecology, 2021)
1. Sodium (Na) is an essential element for all animals, but not plants. Soil Na supplies vary geographically. Animals that primarily consume plants thus have the potential to be Na limited and plants that uptake Na may be subject to higher rates of herbivory, but their high Na content also may attract beneficial partners such as pollinators and seed dispersers.     2. To test for the effects of Na biogeochemistry on herbivory, we conducted distributed Na press experiments (monthly Na application across the growing season) in four North American grasslands.     3. Na addition increased soil and plant Na concentrations at all sites. Grasses in Na addition plots had significantly higher herbivore damage by leaf miners and fungal pathogens than those in control plots. Forbs with higher foliar Na concentrations had significantly more chewing insect herbivore and fungal damage.     4. While no pattern was evident across all species, several forb species had higher Na concentrations in inflorescences compared to leaves, suggesting they may allocate Na to attract beneficial partners.     5. The uptake of sodium by plants, and animal responses, has implications for the salinification in the Anthropocene. Increased use of road salt, irrigation with saline groundwater, rising sea levels, and increasing temperatures and evapotranspiration rates with climate change can all increase inputs of sodium into terrestrial ecosystems.     6. Our results suggest increasing terrestrial sodium availability will benefit insect herbivores and plant fungal pathogens.

Soil fungal communities are compositionally resistant to drought manipulations – Evidence from culture-dependent and culture-independent analyses - Narayanan, Achala; Ismert, K.J.; M.D. Smith; A. Jumpponen (Fungal Ecology, 2021)
Current environmental change predictions forecast intensified drought conditions. It is becoming increasingly evident that plant communities are sensitive to drought and that soil-inhabiting microbial communities vary along precipitation gradients. However, the drought sensitivity of microbial communities in general and that of soil fungi in particular remains unclear, even though understanding their responses to adverse environmental conditions is vital for better understanding of ecosystem service provisioning. We sampled soils at two sites with established experiments that imposed extreme, chronic drought to assess fungal community responses. We analyzed fungal communities using both culture-dependent and -independent tools and MiSeq-sequenced communities from colony forming units (CFU-PCR) on a drought simulating medium and from environmental DNA (ePCR), to compare the conclusions derived from these two methods. Our data from the two approaches consistently indicate that the composition of fungal communities is not affected by the drought treatment, whereas – based on the CFU-PCR but not ePCR data – their richness and diversity increased under drought conditions at the more mesic of the two sites. Further, based on the direct comparisons of CFU-PCR and ePCR, we estimate that more than 10% of the fungal community and more than 20% of the ascomycetes were culturable. We conclude that although recent research indicates that plant and bacterial communities respond to drought, fungal community responses are more variable, particularly in experiments that impose chronic drought under field conditions.

Spatial variation in soil microbial processes as a result of woody encroachment depends on shrub size in tallgrass prairie - Connell, R. K.; O'Connor, Rory; Nippert, J.B.; Blair, J.M. (Plant and Soil, 2021)

Spatio-temporal differences in leaf physiology are associated with fire, not drought, in a clonally integrated shrub - Wedel, E.R.; O’Keefe, K.; Jesse B. Nippert; Hoch, Braden; O’Connor, R.C. (AoB PLANTS, 2021)

Species loss due to nutrient addition increases with spatial scale in global grasslands - Seabloom, Eric W.; Batzer, Evan; Chase, Jonathan M.; Stanley Harpole, W.; Adler, Peter B.; Bagchi, Sumanta; Bakker, Jonathan D.; Barrio, Isabel C.; Biederman, Lori; Boughton, Elizabeth H.; Bugalho, Miguel N.; Caldeira, Maria C.; et al. (Ecology Letters, 2021)
The effects of altered nutrient supplies and herbivore density on species diversity vary with spatial scale, because coexistence mechanisms are scale dependent. This scale dependence may alter the shape of the species–area relationship (SAR), which can be described by changes in species richness (S) as a power function of the sample area (A): S = cAz, where c and z are constants. We analysed the effects of experimental manipulations of nutrient supply and herbivore density on species richness across a range of scales (0.01–75 m2) at 30 grasslands in 10 countries. We found that nutrient addition reduced the number of species that could co-occur locally, indicated by the SAR intercepts (log c), but did not affect the SAR slopes (z). As a result, proportional species loss due to nutrient enrichment was largely unchanged across sampling scales, whereas total species loss increased over threefold across our range of sampling scales.

State changes: insights from the U.S. Long Term Ecological Research Network - Zinnert, Julie C.; Nippert, J.B.; Rudgers, Jennifer A.; Pennings, Steven C.; González, Grizelle; Alber, Merryl; S.G. Baer; J. M. Blair; Burd, Adrian; S L Collins; Craft, Christopher; Di Iorio, Daniela; et al. (Ecosphere, 2021)

Studies of insect temporal trends must account for the complex sampling histories inherent to many long-term monitoring efforts - Welti, E.A.R.; A. Joern; Ellison, Aaron M.; Lightfoot, David C.; Record, Sydne; Rodenhouse, Nicholas; Stanley, Emily H.; Kaspari, Michael (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2021)

A study of grass structure and function in response to drought and grazing - Zaricor, M.L. (Department of Biology, 2021)

Synergies among environmental science research and monitoring networks: A research agenda - Jones, J.A.; Groffman, P.M.; Blair, J.M.; Davis, F.W.; Dugan, H.; Euskirchen, E.E.; Frey, S.D.; Harms, T.K.; Hinckley, E.; Kosmala, M.; Loberg, S.; Malone, S.; et al. (Earth's Future, 2021)
Many research and monitoring networks in recent decades have provided publicly available data documenting environmental and ecological change, but little is known about the status of efforts to synthesize this information across networks. We convened a working group to assess ongoing and potential cross‐network synthesis research and outline opportunities and challenges for the future, focusing on the US‐based research network (the US Long‐Term Ecological Research network, LTER) and monitoring network (the National Ecological Observatory Network, NEON). LTER‐NEON cross‐network research synergies arise from the potentials for LTER measurements, experiments, models, and observational studies to provide context and mechanisms for interpreting NEON data, and for NEON measurements to provide standardization and broad scale coverage that complement LTER studies. Initial cross‐network syntheses at co‐located sites in the LTER and NEON networks are addressing six broad topics: how long‐term vegetation change influences C fluxes; how detailed remotely sensed data reveal vegetation structure and function; aquatic‐terrestrial connections of nutrient cycling; ecosystem response to soil biogeochemistry and microbial processes; population and species responses to environmental change; and disturbance, stability and resilience. This initial study offers exciting potentials for expanded cross‐network syntheses involving multiple long‐term ecosystem processes at regional or continental scales. These potential syntheses could provide a pathway for the broader scientific community, beyond LTER and NEON, to engage in cross‐network science. These examples also apply to many other research and monitoring networks in the US and globally, and can guide scientists and research administrators in promoting broad‐scale research that supports resource management and environmental policy.

Temporal rarity is a better predictor of local extinction risk than spatial rarity - Wilfahrt, Peter A.; Asmus, Ashley L.; Seabloom, Eric W.; Henning, Jeremiah A.; Adler, Peter; Arnillas, Carlos A.; Bakker, Jonathan D.; Biederman, Lori; Brudvig, Lars A.; Cadotte, Marc; Daleo, Pedro; Eskelinen, Anu; et al. (Ecology, 2021)

Tracking nutrients in space and time: Interactions between grazing lawns and drought drive abundances of tallgrass prairie grasshoppers - Ozment, Katerina A.; Welti, Ellen A. R.; Shaffer, Monica; Kaspari, Michael (Ecology and Evolution, 2021)
1. We contrast the response of arthropod abundance and composition to bison grazing lawns during a drought and non-drought year, with an emphasis on acridid grasshoppers, an important grassland herbivore. 2. Grazing lawns are grassland areas where regular grazing by mammalian herbivores creates patches of short-statured, high nutrient vegetation. Grazing lawns are predictable microsites that modify microclimate, plant structure, community composition, and nutrient availability, with likely repercussions for arthropod communities. 3. One year of our study occurred during an extreme drought. Drought mimics some of the effects of mammalian grazers: decreasing above‐ground plant biomass while increasing plant foliar percentage nitrogen. 4. We sampled arthropods and nutrient availability on and nearby (“off”) 10 bison-grazed grazing lawns in a tallgrass prairie in NE Kansas. Total grasshopper abundance was higher on grazing lawns and the magnitude of this difference increased in the wetter year of 2019 compared to 2018, when drought led to high grass foliar nitrogen concentrations on and off grazing lawns. Mixed-feeding grasshopper abundances were consistently higher on grazing lawns while grass‐feeder and forb‐feeder abundances were higher on lawns only in 2019, the wetter year. In contrast, the abundance of other arthropods (e.g., Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, and Araneae) did not differ on and off lawns, but increased overall in 2019, relative to the drought of 2018. 5. Understanding these local scale patterns of abundances and community composition improves predictability of arthropod responses to ongoing habitat change.

Watershed and fire severity are stronger determinants of soil chemistry and microbiomes than within-watershed woody encroachment in a tallgrass prairie system - Mino, Laura; Kolp, Matthew R; Fox, Sam; Reazin, Chris; L.H. Zeglin; A. Jumpponen (FEMS Microbiology Ecology, 2021)

Why coordinated distributed experiments should go global - Yahdjian, Laura; Sala, Osvaldo E; PiÑEiro-Guerra, Juan Manuel; Alan K. Knapp; Collins, Scott L.; Phillips, Richard P; M. D. Smith (BioScience, 2021)

Asymmetric responses of ecosystem productivity to rainfall anomalies vary inversely with mean annual rainfall over the conterminous U.S - Al-Yaari, A.; Wigneron, J.P.; Ciais, P.; Reichstein, M.; Ballantyne, A.; Ogée, J.; Ducharne, A.; Swenson, J.J.; Frappart, F.; Fan, L.; Wingate, L.; Li, X.; et al. (Global Change Biology, 2020)

Biomass loss and change in species dominance shift stream community excretion stoichiometry during severe drought - Hopper, Garrett W.; K. B. Gido; Pennock, Casey A.; Hedden, Skyler C.; Guinnip, James P.; Fisher, Molly A.; Tobler, Courtney M.; Hedden, Crosby K.; Lindsey A. Bruckerhoff (Freshwater Biology, 2020)
1. Animals contribute significantly to nutrient cycling through excretion, but most studies consider their effects under relatively benign abiotic conditions. Disturbances such as drought may alter animals’ nutrient contributions through shifts in species composition and biomass. Headwater streams are particularly vulnerable to extreme climate events and thus might show rapid changes in stream biota and their ecosystem effects.     2. We tested how biomass and subsequent ecosystem effects (nutrient cycling) of an intermittent prairie stream community changed during a drought. We quantified the biomass and contributions to nutrient cycling for assemblages comprising fishes, crayfish, and tadpoles in 12 isolated pools over 3 months encompassing the harshest drought on record for Kings Creek, KS, U.S.A. We predicted that macroconsumer biomass would decline with pool surface area and that differences in macroconsumer biomass and taxonomic composition would lead to different contributions of pool assemblages to nutrient cycling.     3. The biomass of pool assemblages declined with decreasing pool size, a pattern apparently driven by mortality, emigration, or metamorphosis. We also observed a change in assemblage structure of drying pools during drought relative to pool size, shifting dominance toward species with more drought‐resistant traits. Accordingly, assemblage nitrogen (N) excretion rates declined as pool biomass was reduced, leading to a 58% reduction in N available to epilithic biofilms. Phosphorus (P) excretion rates declined from June to July, but increased in August, as species with high P excretion rates maintained similar proportional biomass and biomass of a non‐native fish increased. Molar N:P of pool assemblage excretion declined significantly throughout the drought and coincided with loss of southern redbelly dace (Chrosomus erythrogaster: Cyprinidae).     4. Animal‐mediated nutrient cycling was altered by the loss of biomass and stoichiometric traits of taxa that differed in their occurrences and ability to tolerate abiotic conditions during drought. Elevated availability of dissolved N in isolated pools may increase N uptake rates by biofilms during drought conditions, indicating the importance of N excreted by aggregated macroconsumers, especially those with unique stoichiometric traits. While the significance of shifts in the composition of freshwater communities to ecosystems is not entirely known, additional losses in ecosystem function and changes in community structure may follow episodes of severe drought.

Body size structure of soil fauna along geographic and temporal gradients of precipitation in grasslands - Andriuzzi, Walter S.; Franco, André L.C.; Ankrom, Katharine E.; Cui, Shuyan; de Tomasel, Cecilia M.; Guan, Pingting; Gherardi, Laureano A.; Sala, Osvaldo E.; Wall, Diana H. (Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 2020)
Precipitation is a global driver of animal abundance and diversity in terrestrial ecosystems, but we know little on how it influences the body size structure of invertebrate communities, particularly soil fauna. It is unclear whether aridity limits the abundance of large-bodied soil invertebrates, and whether temporal precipitation changes can induce local shifts. The potential role of trophic identity in modulating such relationships is also unexplored. Here we investigate the community-weighted mean body mass of soil nematodes, globally widespread invertebrates, in a two-year manipulative experiment with experimental drought and increased rainfall, conducted in three North American grassland ecosystems ranging from arid to semiarid and mesic conditions. We predict that community-weighted mean increases along with precipitation, and that long-term aridity prevents body size shifts in response to within-site temporal changes in precipitation. Nematode community-weighted mean mass increased from arid to mesic conditions. Altered precipitation within sites had much weaker effects, and none detectable in the arid site. When analysing community-weighted mean mass separately by feeding group, only plant-feeding nematodes responded positively to rainfall addition in semiarid and mesic conditions, as well as to ambient interannual differences consistently across sites, presumably due to a tighter ecological linkage with primary production. Our findings point to aridity as an environmental filter against large-bodied soil nematodes, with limited potential for community body size shifts in response to extremely dry or wet years. However, the different responses of plant-feeding taxa from other functional groups indicate potential mismatches between morphologically similar taxa in multitrophic invertebrate communities.

Bottom‐up when it is not top‐down: Predators and plants control biomass of grassland arthropods - Welti, Ellen A. R.; Prather, Rebecca M.; Sanders, Nathan J.; deBeurs, Kirsten M.; Kaspari, Michael (Journal of Animal Ecology, 2020)
1) We investigate where bottom‐up and top‐down control regulates ecological communities as a mechanism linking ecological gradients to the geography of consumer abundance and biomass. We use standardized surveys of 54 North American grasslands to test alternate hypotheses predicting 100‐fold shifts in the biomass of four common grassland arthropod taxa—Auchenorrhyncha, sucking herbivores, Acrididae, chewing herbivores, Tettigoniidae, omnivores, and Araneae, predators. 2) Bottom‐up models predict that consumer biomass tracks plant quantity (e.g. productivity and standing biomass) and quality (nutrient content) and that ectotherm access to food increases with temperature. Each of the focal trophic groups responded differently to these drivers: the biomass of sucking herbivores and omnivores increased with plant biomass; that of chewing herbivores tracked plant quality; and predator biomass did not depend on plant quality, plant quantity, or temperature. 3) The exploitation ecosystem hypothesis (EEH) is a top‐down hypothesis that predicts a shift from resource limitation of herbivores when plant production is low, to predator limitation when plant production is high. In grasslands where spider biomass was low, herbivore biomass increased with plant biomass, whereas bottom‐up structuring was not evident when spiders were abundant. Furthermore, neither predator biomass nor trophic position (via stable isotope analysis) increased with plant biomass, suggesting predators themselves are top‐down limited. 4) Stable isotope analysis revealed that trophic position of the chewing herbivore and omnivore increased significantly with plant biomass, suggesting these groups increased scavenging and meat consumption in grasslands with higher carbohydrate availability. 5) Taken together, our snapshot sampling documents gradients of food web structure across 54 grasslands, consistent with multiple hypotheses of bottom‐up and top‐down regulation.

Bridging the flux gap: Sap flow measurements reveal species‐specific patterns of water use in a tallgrass prairie - O'Keefe, Kimberly; Bell, David M.; McCulloh, Katherine A.; Jesse B. Nippert (Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 2020)
Predicting the hydrological consequences following changes in grassland vegetation type (i.e., woody encroachment) requires an understanding of water flux dynamics at high spatiotemporal resolution for predominant species within grassland communities. However, grassland fluxes are typically measured at the leaf or landscape scale, which inhibits our ability to predict how individual species contribute to changing ecosystem fluxes. We used external heat balance sap flow sensors and a hierarchical Bayesian state‐space modeling approach to bridge this “flux gap” and estimate continuous species‐level water flux in common tallgrass prairie species. Specifically, we asked the following: (1) How do diurnal and nocturnal water fluxes differ among woody and herbaceous plants? (2) How sensitive are woody and herbaceous species to environmental drivers of diurnal and nocturnal water flux? We highlight three results: (1) Cornus drummondii, the primary woody encroacher in this grassland, exhibited the greatest canopy‐level water loss; (2) nocturnal transpiration was a large component of the water lost in this ecosystem and was driven primarily by C4 grasses and C. drummondii; and (3) the sensitivity of canopy transpiration to environmental drivers varies among plant functional types and throughout a 24‐hr period. Our data reveal important insights regarding the water use strategies of woody versus herbaceous species in tallgrass prairies and about the potential hydrological consequences of ongoing woody encroachment. We suggest that the high, static flux rates observed in woody species will likely deplete deep water stores over time, potentially creating hydrological deficits in grasslands experiencing woody encroachment and concomitantly increasing the vulnerability of these ecosystems to drought.

Browsing and fire decreases dominance of a resprouting shrub in woody encroached grassland - O’Connor, R.C.; Taylor, J.H.; Jesse B. Nippert (Ecology, 2020)
North American grasslands have experienced increased relative abundance of shrubs and trees over the last 150 years. Alterations in herbivore composition, abundance and grazing pressure along with changes in fire frequency are drivers that can regulate the transition from grassland to shrubland or woodland (a process known as woody encroachment). Historically, North American grasslands had a suite of large herbivores that grazed and/or browsed (i.e. bison, elk, pronghorn, deer), as well as frequent and intense fires. In the tallgrass prairie, many large native ungulates were extirpated by the 1860’s corresponding with increased homesteading (which led to decreased fire frequencies and intensities). Changes in the frequency and intensity of these two drivers (browsing and fire) has coincided with woody encroachment in tallgrass prairie. Within tallgrass prairie, woody encroachment can be categorized in to two groups: non‐resprouting species that can be killed with fire, and resprouting species that cannot be killed with fire. Resprouting species require additional active management strategies to decrease abundance and eventually be removed from the ecosystem. In this study we investigated plant cover, ramet density and physiological effects of continuous simulated browsing and prescribed fire on Cornus drummondii C.A. Mey, a resprouting clonal native shrub species. Browsing reduced C. drummondii canopy cover and increased grass cover. We also observed decreased ramet density that allowed for more infilling of grasses. Photosynthetic rates between browsed and unbrowsed control shrubs did not increase in 2015 or 2016. In 2017, photosynthetic rates for browsed shrubs were higher in the unburned site than the unbrowsed control shrubs at the end of the growing season. Additionally, after the prescribed fire, browsed shrubs had ~ 90% decreased cover, ~50% reduced ramet density, and grass cover increased by ~ 80%. In the roots of browsed shrubs after the prescribed fire, non‐structural carbohydrates (NSC) experienced a 2‐fold reduction in glucose and a 3‐fold reduction in both sucrose and starch. The combined effects of browsing and fire show strong potential as a successful management tool to decrease the abundance of clonal‐resprouting woody plants in mesic grasslands and illustrate the potential significance of browsers as a key driver in this ecosystem.

Communities of small mammals, tallgrass prairie, and prescribed fire: a fire-reversal experiment - D.W. Kaufman; Kaufman, G.A.; Kaufman, D.M.; Reed, A.W.; Rehmeier, R.L. (Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, 2020)

Connections and feedback: Aquatic, plant, and soil microbiomes in heterogeneous and changing environments - W. K. Dodds; L.H. Zeglin; Ramos, R.J.; Platt, T.G.; Pandey, A.; Michaels, T.; Masigol, M.; Klompen, A.M.L.; Kelly, M.C.; A. Jumpponen; Hauser, E.; Hansen, P.M.; et al. (BioScience, 2020)
Plant, soil, and aquatic microbiomes interact, but scientists often study them independently. Integrating knowledge across these traditionally separate subdisciplines will generate better understanding of microbial ecological properties. Interactions among plant, soil, and aquatic microbiomes, as well as anthropogenic factors, influence important ecosystem processes, including greenhouse gas fluxes, crop production, nonnative species control, and nutrient flux from terrestrial to aquatic habitats. Terrestrial microbiomes influence nutrient retention and particle movement, thereby influencing the composition and functioning of aquatic microbiomes, which, themselves, govern water quality, and the potential for harmful algal blooms. Understanding how microbiomes drive links among terrestrial (plant and soil) and aquatic habitats will inform management decisions influencing ecosystem services. In the present article, we synthesize knowledge of microbiomes from traditionally disparate fields and how they mediate connections across physically separated systems. We identify knowledge gaps currently limiting our abilities to actualize microbiome management approaches for addressing environmental problems and optimize ecosystem services.

Dispersal drives changes in fish community abundance in intermittent stream networks - Hedden, Skyler C.; K. B. Gido (River Research and Applications, 2020)
Increasing trends in fragmentation and dewatering of streams warrants research on how populations and communities respond to varying water levels and barriers to movement. Although these responses are complicated by many spatial and temporal processes, long-term datasets might help reveal complex patterns and processes driving variability in species abundances. The objective of this study was to develop a predictive framework for fish community and population responses to varying levels of water availability across six sites in two intermittent stream networks sampled >10 years. We predicted that fishes would emigrate into intermittent reaches during wet conditions; thus, overall abundances within perennial source locations will decline. Accordingly, when intermittent reaches dry, fishes will contract to wetted habitats resulting in high abundance. Observed fish community abundances were highly variable within and among study sites, but four of six sites matched our predictions. A tagging study confirmed these results and demonstrated a substantial proportion of individuals moved away from perennial reaches and into newly wetted intermittent reaches. However, site and species-specific relationships were variable and likely depended on the habitat, metacommunity dynamics, and life history strategies. Findings suggest that species dispersal dynamics, in addition to recruitment and mortality, should be carefully considered when interpreting species responses to varying water levels, particularly in intermittent stream networks where access to habitat can change drastically with water availability.

Does riparian fencing protect stream water quality in cattle-grazed lands? - Grudzinski, B.; Fritz, K.; W. K. Dodds (Environmental Management, 2020)
Cattle degrade streams by increasing sediment, nutrient, and fecal bacteria levels. Riparian fencing is one best management practice that may protect water quality within many grazed lands. Here we surveyed the literature and summarized the responses of sediment, nutrient, and fecal indicator bacteria levels to riparian exclosure fencing in cattle-grazed lands. Overall, our review of relevant literature supports the role of riparian exclosure fencing in reducing the negative impact of cattle on water quality, particularly for sediment and fecal indicator bacteria in temperate forest and temperate grassland streams. Establishing buffer widths > 5–10 m appears to increase the likelihood of water quality improvements. Fencing may also be effective at reducing pollutant inputs during stormflows. Our survey also identified critical spatial and thematic gaps that future research programs should address. Despite cattle grazing being prevalent in 12 terrestrial biomes, our systematic search of the empirical literature identified 26 relevant studies across only three biomes. Regions with the greatest cattle populations remain largely unstudied. In addition, we identified inconsistencies in how studies reported information on regional factors, cattle management, and other metrics related to study results. We provide a list of standard parameters for future studies to consider reporting to improve cross-study comparisons of riparian fencing impacts. We also encourage future studies in semi-arid and tropical regions where cattle grazing is common.

Ecto- and endoparasitic nematodes respond differently across sites to changes in precipitation - Ankrom, K.E.; Franco, andré; Fonte, S.J.; Gherardi, L.A.; de Tomasel, C.M.; Andriuzzi, W.S.; Shaw, E. A.; Sala, O.E.; Wall, D.H. (Oecologia, 2020)

Effect of land use and land use management on methane oxidation - Wanithunga, Irosha (Department of Agronomy, 2020)