D. Taylor
University of New Mexico, Department of Biology, Faculty Member
In nitrogen (N) fixing symbioses, host-symbiont specificity, genetic variation in bacterial symbionts and environmental variation represent fundamental constraints on the ecology, evolution and practical uses of these interactions, but... more
In nitrogen (N) fixing symbioses, host-symbiont specificity, genetic variation in bacterial symbionts and environmental variation represent fundamental constraints on the ecology, evolution and practical uses of these interactions, but detailed information is lacking for many naturally occurring N-fixers. This study examined phylogenetic host specificity of Frankia in field-collected nodules of two Alnus species (A. tenuifolia and A. viridis) in interior Alaska and, for A. tenuifolia, distribution, diversity, spatial autocorrelation and correlation with specific soil factors of Frankia genotypes in nodules collected from replicated habitats representing endpoints of a primary sere. Frankia genotypes most commonly associated with each host belonged to different clades within the Alnus-infective Frankia clade, and for A. tenuifolia, were divergent from previously described Frankia. A. tenuifolia nodules from early and late succession habitats harboured distinct Frankia assemblages. In...
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Author; TAYLOR D. LEE (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) HERRIOTT IAN (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) GEML JOZSEF (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) MARR TOM (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) LONG JAMES (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) RUESS ROGER (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) LAURSEN GARY... more
Author; TAYLOR D. LEE (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) HERRIOTT IAN (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) GEML JOZSEF (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) MARR TOM (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) LONG JAMES (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) RUESS ROGER (Univ. Alaska, Ak, Usa) LAURSEN GARY (Univ. ...
This paper assesses the resilience of Alaska’s boreal forest system to rapid climatic change. Recent warming is associated with reduced growth of dominant tree species, plant disease and insect outbreaks, warming and thawing of... more
This paper assesses the resilience of Alaska’s boreal forest system to rapid climatic change. Recent warming is associated with reduced growth of dominant tree species, plant disease and insect outbreaks, warming and thawing of permafrost, drying of lakes, increased wildfire extent, increased postfire recruitment of deciduous trees, and reduced safety of hunters traveling on river ice. These changes have modified key structural features, feedbacks, and interactions in the boreal forest, including reduced effects of upland permafrost on regional hydrology, expansion of boreal forest into tundra, and amplification of climate warming because of reduced albedo (shorter winter season) and carbon release from wildfires. Other temperature-sensitive processes for which no trends have been detected include composition of plant and microbial communities, long-term landscape-scale change in carbon stocks, stream discharge, mammalian population dynamics, and river access and subsistence opportu...
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Increasing ecological inference from high throughput sequencing of fungi in the environment through a tagging approach
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This dataset contains proportion of fine root length colonized by root-associated fungi, foliar %N, %C, d15N, d13C, and maximum photosynthesis, respiration, LAI, and CUE for Picea mariana, Picea glauca, Alnus viridis, and Betula... more
This dataset contains proportion of fine root length colonized by root-associated fungi, foliar %N, %C, d15N, d13C, and maximum photosynthesis, respiration, LAI, and CUE for Picea mariana, Picea glauca, Alnus viridis, and Betula neo-alaskana seedlings inoculated with root-associated fungal communities and outplanted at Finger Mountain and the Anaktuvuk River Fire burn scars.
Additional file 7a, b. Biplots of nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordinations of fungal communities associated with a). alder and b). spruce seedlings inoculated with soils from the Anaktuvuk River Fire and site characteristics. Active... more
Additional file 7a, b. Biplots of nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordinations of fungal communities associated with a). alder and b). spruce seedlings inoculated with soils from the Anaktuvuk River Fire and site characteristics. Active layer = depth of the unfrozen soil at time of sampling; dNBR = differenced normalized burn ratio of the sampling site; CBI = composite burn index of the sampling site.
The δ13C values of amino acids from fungi, bacteria, and plants.
This dataset contains data on Nothofagus pumilio seedlings sampled from a Variable Retention (VR) managed forest in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina seven years after harvesting. We evaluated the effects of a VR timber management system on the... more
This dataset contains data on Nothofagus pumilio seedlings sampled from a Variable Retention (VR) managed forest in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina seven years after harvesting. We evaluated the effects of a VR timber management system on the EMF community associated with N. pumilio seedlings. We quantified the abundance, composition, and diversity of EMF across aggregate (AR) and dispersed retention (DR) sites within a VR managed area and compared them to primary forest (PF) stands. EMF assemblage and taxonomic identities were determined by ITS-rDNA sequencing of individual root tips sampled from 280 seedlings across three landscape replicates of each VR treatment. To better understand seedling performance, we tested the relationships between fungal colonization, fungal taxonomic composition, seedling biomass, and VR treatment across our study sites. This data was collected as a comparative component to a larger project understanding the effect of mycorrizhae on seedling success after ...
Site coordinates, sampling information, and F:P ratios across sites.
experimentally assess whether provision of fungal inoculum results in establishment and survival of tree seedlings in previously unforested sites. This experiment addresses whether there is fungal limitation to tree seedling establishment... more
experimentally assess whether provision of fungal inoculum results in establishment and survival of tree seedlings in previously unforested sites. This experiment addresses whether there is fungal limitation to tree seedling establishment beyond treeline and whether fire induced changes in plant-fungal interactions at ecotones could result in landcover shifts. • There is a significant difference in seedling growth across the 18 treatments (spruce p=.001, alder p=.003). • However when the soils are grouped into control, low, and high fire severity there is no significant difference in growth from August to February. Figure 1: Inoculum from different fire severities did not result in differential growth of spruce or alder TREE OUTPLANTING • Inoculated white spruce, black spruce, alder, and paper birch with ectomycorrhizal fungi from burned forest, unburned forest, and sterilized inoculum. • Outplanted tree seedlings beyond latitudinal treeline in tussock tundra at the Anaktuvuk River ...
The internal transcribed spacer (ITS) is the locus of choice with which to characterize fungal diversity in environmental samples. However, methods to analyze ITS datasets have lagged behind the capacity to generate large amounts of... more
The internal transcribed spacer (ITS) is the locus of choice with which to characterize fungal diversity in environmental samples. However, methods to analyze ITS datasets have lagged behind the capacity to generate large amounts of sequence information. Here, we describe our bioinformatics pipeline to process large fungal ITS sequence datasets, from raw chromatograms to a spreadsheet of operational taxonomic unit (OTU) abundances across samples. Steps include assembling of reads originating from one clone, identifying primer “barcodes ” or “tags, ” trimming vectors and primers, marking low-quality base calls and removing low-quality sequences, orienting sequences, extracting the ITS region from longer amplicons, and grouping sequences into OTUs. We expect that the principles and tools presented here are relevant to datasets arising from ever-evolving new technologies.
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Because of its high phosphorus (P) demands, it is likely that the abundance, distribution, and N-fixing capacity of Alnus in boreal forests are tightly coupled with P availability and the mobilization and uptake of soil P via... more
Because of its high phosphorus (P) demands, it is likely that the abundance, distribution, and N-fixing capacity of Alnus in boreal forests are tightly coupled with P availability and the mobilization and uptake of soil P via ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF). We examined whether Alnus shifts EMF communities in coordination with increasingly more complex organic P forms across a 200-year-old successional sequence along the Tanana River in interior Alaska. Root-tip activities of acid phosphatase, phosphodiesterase, and phytase of A. tenuifolia-associated EMF were positively intercorrelated but did not change in a predictable manner across the shrub, to hardwood to coniferous forest successional sequence. Approximately half of all Alnus roots were colonized by Alnicola and Tomentella taxa, and ordination analysis indicated that the EMF community on Alnus is a relatively distinct, host-specific group. Despite differences in the activities of the two Alnus dominants to mobilize acid phosphata...
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Vegetation change in high latitude tundra ecosystems is expected to accelerate due to increased wildfire activity. High-severity fires increase the availability of mineral soil seedbeds, which facilitates recruitment, yet fire also alters... more
Vegetation change in high latitude tundra ecosystems is expected to accelerate due to increased wildfire activity. High-severity fires increase the availability of mineral soil seedbeds, which facilitates recruitment, yet fire also alters soil microbial composition, which could significantly impact seedling establishment. We investigated the effects of fire severity on soil biota and associated effects on plant performance for two plant species predicted to expand into Arctic tundra. We inoculated seedlings in a growth chamber experiment with soils collected from the largest tundra fire recorded in the Arctic and used molecular tools to characterize root-associated fungal communities. Seedling biomass was significantly related to the composition of fungal inoculum. Biomass decreased as fire severity increased and the proportion of pathogenic fungi increased. Our results suggest that effects of fire severity on soil biota reduces seedling performance and thus we hypothesize that in c...
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ABSTRACT Molecular and morphological data are presented for three Agaricus species on Campbell Island, New Zealand. Two of these are new species, A. campbellensis and A. subantarcticus. The third may be conspecific with A. subrutilescens,... more
ABSTRACT Molecular and morphological data are presented for three Agaricus species on Campbell Island, New Zealand. Two of these are new species, A. campbellensis and A. subantarcticus. The third may be conspecific with A. subrutilescens, although the molecular data suggest a lack of gene flow between subantarctic and North American populations. Alternatively, it could be a closely related, but undescribed species. This is the first report of the Subrutilescens group from the Southern Hemisphere.
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Despite the critical roles fungi play in the functioning of ecosystems, especially as symbionts of plants and recyclers of organic matter, their biodiversity is poorly known in high-latitude regions. Among these, Beringia, including... more
Despite the critical roles fungi play in the functioning of ecosystems, especially as symbionts of plants and recyclers of organic matter, their biodiversity is poorly known in high-latitude regions. Among these, Beringia, including Alaska and north-eastern Siberia, has ...
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Research Interests: Geography, Demography, Computational Biology, Biology, Fungi, and 15 moreBiogeography, Medicine, Genetic Algorithm, Molecular Ecology, Biological Sciences, Molecular, New Zealand, North America, Geographic distribution, Base Sequence, Alaska, DNA sequence, Molecular Sequence Data, Amanita, and Internal transcribed spacer
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This paper outlines molecular analyses of soil fungi within the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research program. We examined community structure in three studies in mixed upland, black spruce ( Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP), and white... more
This paper outlines molecular analyses of soil fungi within the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research program. We examined community structure in three studies in mixed upland, black spruce ( Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP), and white spruce ( Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) forests and examined taxa involved in cellulose degradation at one upland site. We found that soil horizon was the factor by which fungal communities were most strongly structured and that predictable turnover in upland fungal species occurred through succession. Communities from consecutive summers were not significantly different, indicating that interannual variation was small in relation to differences between forest types and soil horizons, yet the community at a seasonal study site underwent significant changes within a year. In each study, mycorrhizal fungi dominated the community. Fungi rather than bacteria appeared to dominate [13C]cellulose degradation, with strongest growth in taxa that were not dominant...
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Additional file 1. Site descriptions for eight sampling sites grouped by fire-severity categories within the Anaktuvuk River Fire burn scar. We classified vegetation communities using the Viereck (1992) vegetation classification: 2C2A =... more
Additional file 1. Site descriptions for eight sampling sites grouped by fire-severity categories within the Anaktuvuk River Fire burn scar. We classified vegetation communities using the Viereck (1992) vegetation classification: 2C2A = open low scrub mixed shrub-sedge tussock tundra, 2C2H = open low scrub willow-sedge shrub tundra, 3A21 = mesic graminoid herbaceous sedge-birch tundra, 3A2D = mesic graminoid herbaceous tussock tundra, and 3A3 = wet graminoid herbaceous tundra. Fire-severity categories were assigned based on composite burn index and field descriptions.
A description of other plant species and soil characteristics of the study site.
Flowering and climatic data for the Corallorhiza odontorhiza study plot during the years 1994–2007.
Additional file 3. Biological key showing ribotype ID, abundance, range of fungal ITS fragment lengths, associated OTU identity, and the best match description as reported in GenBank.
Research Interests: Mass Spectrometry, Combustion, Biology, Ecology, Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry, and 15 moreFungi, Medicine, Isotopic Analysis, Discriminant Analysis, Carbon Isotopes, Food web, Isotopes, Bacteria, Gas Chromatography, Boreal Forest, Amino Acids, Carbon Isotope, Isotope, Ecological Applications, and DNA sequence
Additional file 6. Description of final solutions for nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordinations of fungal composition for all seedlings and treatment x species combinations.