Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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We’ve got Acidobacteria
Acidobacteria are highly abundant in most soil bacterial communities, but are rarely cultured in the lab. The ones that have been cultured grow very slowly and generally require specialized growth media. Acidobacteria probably represent the ultimate K-selected microbe: they very gradually build up populations and then hang on forever, dividing once a month or so…
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Rate-yield tradeoffs and soil respiration in a high elevation forest
While studying seasonal changes in microbial growth kinetics in soils of a subalpine forest in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, I noticed a negative relationship between maximum growth rate and growth efficiency, or yield (the fraction of carbon consumed that is converted into biomass, as opposed to being respired as CO2). Turns out this is a…
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Differential responses of native and exotic coastal sage scrub plant species to N additions and the soil microbial community
JDPE student, Francis Bozzolo, published part of his dissertation in Plant and Soil. Part of the motivation for this study was that the dominant shrubs of Coastal Sage Scrub ecosystems are generally clumped in patches, as in the photo above. Do they partition N by depth or chemical form? What happens to N partitioning when…
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Microbial Knot
This project was a collaboration with local artist and high school teacher, Jason Rogalski. This was part of the Urban Succession project, funded in part by a DNA of Creativity grant, and was exhibited at the Oceanside Museum of Art (though they made us take out all the foul-smelling muck and just display the empty…
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