We coupled measurements of beach pore water residence time, determined using the radioisotopic tracer 222Rn, with dissolved carbon and nitrogen chemistry to identify the temporal evolution and ...variability of dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentrations in beach pore water along the Santa Barbara, California coastline. Pore water dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) ratios (DOC:TDN) were negative exponentially correlated with residence time. Mean pore water residence times were positively correlated with tidal amplitudes, and ranged from 4.4 to 6.4 days. We used this range in mean residence times to model radon residence time distributions (RTDs), and integrated them with modeled DIN vs residence time relationships (DIN-temporal evolution, or DIN-te curves) to derive volume-weighted mean (VWM) DIN concentrations. We observed 1.2-fold and 5.2-fold differences (20% and 420% increases) in VWM DIN concentrations over the range in modeled RTDs and DIN-te curves, respectively, and a maximum 6.4-fold difference (540% increase) in VWM DIN concentrations for an interactive shift in the RTD and the DIN-te curve. Our study suggests that accounting for temporal variability in the RTD and DIN concentration of pore water is necessary to obtain more accurate estimates of DIN delivery to coastal oceans.
Anthropogenic changes are altering the environmental conditions and the biota of ecosystems worldwide. In many temperate grasslands, such as North American tallgrass prairie, these changes include ...alteration in historically important disturbance regimes (e.g., frequency of fires) and enhanced availability of potentially limiting nutrients, particularly nitrogen. Such anthropogenically-driven changes in the environment are known to elicit substantial changes in plant and consumer communities aboveground, but much less is known about their effects on soil microbial communities. Due to the high diversity of soil microbes and methodological challenges associated with assessing microbial community composition, relatively few studies have addressed specific taxonomic changes underlying microbial community-level responses to different fire regimes or nutrient amendments in tallgrass prairie. We used deep sequencing of the V3 region of the 16S rRNA gene to explore the effects of contrasting fire regimes and nutrient enrichment on soil bacterial communities in a long-term (20 yrs) experiment in native tallgrass prairie in the eastern Central Plains. We focused on responses to nutrient amendments coupled with two extreme fire regimes (annual prescribed spring burning and complete fire exclusion). The dominant bacterial phyla identified were Proteobacteria, Verrucomicrobia, Bacteriodetes, Acidobacteria, Firmicutes, and Actinobacteria and made up 80% of all taxa quantified. Chronic nitrogen enrichment significantly impacted bacterial community diversity and community structure varied according to nitrogen treatment, but not phosphorus enrichment or fire regime. We also found significant responses of individual bacterial groups including Nitrospira and Gammaproteobacteria to long-term nitrogen enrichment. Our results show that soil nitrogen enrichment can significantly alter bacterial community diversity, structure, and individual taxa abundance, which have important implications for both managed and natural grassland ecosystems.
Understanding what constrains the persistence of species in communities is at the heart of community assembly theory and its application to conserving and enhancing biodiversity. The "environmental ...heterogeneity hypothesis" predicts greater species coexistence in habitats with greater resource variability. In the context of community assembly, environmental heterogeneity may influence the variety and strength of abiotic conditions and competitive interactions (environmental filters) to affect the relative abundance of species and biodiversity. We manipulated key resources that influence plant diversity in tallgrass prairie (i.e., soil depth and nitrogen availability) to increase environmental heterogeneity prior to sowing native prairie species into a former agricultural field. We compared variability in nutrient availability, aboveground annual net primary productivity (ANPP), and the composition of species between replicate plots containing soil heterogeneity manipulations and plots with no resource manipulations (n = 4 per treatment) during the first 15 yr of community assembly as a test of the "environmental heterogeneity hypothesis." The manipulations increased environmental heterogeneity, measured as the coefficient of variation in NO3-N availability and ANPP. Plant diversity, however, was similar and decayed exponentially and indiscriminately over time between the heterogeneity treatments. Species richness declined linearly over time in both heterogeneity treatments, but richness was higher in the more heterogeneous soil 2 yr following a second propagule addition 8 yr after the initial sowing. As a result, there was a lower rate of species loss over time in the more heterogeneous soil (0.60 species yr–1) relative to the control soil (0.96 species yr–1). Communities in each treatment exhibited strong convergence over time resulting from a shift in dominant species across all treatments and a gradual increase in the clonal C4 grass, Andropogon gerardii. We attribute the weak effect of heterogeneity on diversity to increasing dominance of a clonal species, which decreased the scale of soil treatments relative to plant size, dispersal limitation, and absence of a key driver (grazing) known to increase plant diversity under a frequent fire regime. Thus, steering community assembly to attain high biodiversity may depend more on manipulating processes that reduce dominance and facilitate the arrival of new species than promoting environmental heterogeneity.
Climate models predict, and empirical evidence confirms, that more extreme precipitation regimes are occurring in tandem with warmer atmospheric temperatures. These more extreme rainfall patterns are ...characterized by increased event size separated by longer within season drought periods and represent novel climatic conditions whose consequences for different ecosystem types are largely unknown. Here, we present results from an experiment in which more extreme rainfall patterns were imposed in three native grassland sites in the Central Plains Region of North America, USA. Along this 600 km precipitation-productivity gradient, there was strong sensitivity of temperate grasslands to more extreme growing season rainfall regimes, with responses of aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) contingent on mean soil water levels for different grassland types. At the mesic end of the gradient (tallgrass prairie), longer dry intervals between events led to extended periods of below-average soil water content, increased plant water stress and reduced ANPP by 18%. The opposite response occurred at the dry end (semiarid steppe), where a shift to fewer, but larger, events increased periods of above-average soil water content, reduced seasonal plant water stress and resulted in a 30% increase in ANPP. At an intermediate mixed grass prairie site with high plant species richness, ANPP was most sensitive to more extreme rainfall regimes (70% increase). These results highlight the inherent complexity in predicting how terrestrial ecosystems will respond to forecast novel climate conditions as well as the difficulties in extending inferences from single site experiments across biomes. Even with no change in annual precipitation amount, ANPP responses in a relatively uniform physiographic region differed in both magnitude and direction in response to within season changes in rainfall event size/frequency.
Woody plant expansion is one of the greatest contemporary threats to mesic grasslands of the central United States. In this article, we synthesize more than 20 years of research to elucidate the ...causes and consequences of the ongoing transition of C4-dominated grasslands to savanna-like ecosystems codominated by grasses and woody plants. This transition is contingent on fire-free intervals, which provide the opportunity for recruitment both of new individuals and of additional shrub and tree species into this grassland. Once shrubs establish, their cover increases regardless of fire frequency, and infrequent fires accelerate the spread of some shrub species. This process has resulted in a new dynamic state of shrub–grass coexistence in the mesic grasslands of North America. Important consequences of this shift in plant life-form abundance include alterations in plant productivity, species diversity, and carbon storage. Without drastic measures such as mechanical removal of shrubs, it is unlikely that management of fire and grazing regimes alone will be sufficient to restore historic grass dominance in these ecosystems.
A more complete understanding of aberrant oncogenic signaling in neuroblastoma, a malignancy of the developing sympathetic nervous system, is paramount to improving patient outcomes. Recently, we ...identified LIN28B as an oncogenic driver in high-risk neuroblastoma. Here, we identify the oncogene RAN as a LIN28B target and show regional gain of chromosome 12q24 as an additional somatic alteration resulting in increased RAN expression. We show that LIN28B influences RAN expression by promoting RAN Binding Protein 2 expression and by directly binding RAN mRNA. Further, we demonstrate a convergence of LIN28B and RAN signaling on Aurora kinase A activity. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that LIN28B-RAN-AURKA signaling drives neuroblastoma oncogenesis, suggesting that this pathway may be amenable to therapeutic targeting.
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•LIN28B and regional gain of chromosome 12q24 mediate RAN oncogene overexpression•RAN promotes cell proliferation in neuroblastoma•LIN28B promotes RAN levels by binding RAN mRNA and via RAN binding protein 2•LIN28B promotes Aurora kinase A expression in a let-7-dependent manner
Extending from prior identification of LIN28B as an oncogenic driver in high-risk neuroblastoma, Schnepp et al. show that LIN28B regulates the RAN level directly by mRNA binding and indirectly via let-7-regulated RANBP2. LIN28B and RAN signaling converge on Aurora kinase A, suggesting therapeutic potential.
Above-ground net primary productivity (ANPP) is indicative of an ecosystem's ability to capture solar energy and convert it to organic carbon (or biomass), which may be used by consumers or ...decomposers, or stored in the form of living and nonliving organic matter. Annual and interannual variation in ANPP is often linked to climate dynamics and anthropogenic influences, such as fertilization, irrigation, above-ground biomass harvest, and so on. The Central Great Plains grasslands occupy over 1.5 million km² and are a primary resource for livestock production in North America. The tallgrass prairies are the most productive grasslands in this region, and the Flint Hills of North America represent the largest contiguous area of unploughed tallgrass prairie (1.6 million ha). Measurements of ANPP are of critical importance to the proper management and understanding of climatic and anthropogenic influences on tallgrass prairie. Yet, accurate, detailed, and systematic measurements of ANPP over large geographic regions do not exist for this ecosystem. For these reasons, this study was conducted to investigate the use of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to model ANPP of the tallgrass prairie. Many studies have established a positive relationship between the NDVI and ANPP, but the strength of this relationship is influenced by vegetation types and can vary significantly from year to year depending on land use and climatic conditions. The goal of this study was to develop a robust model using the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) biweekly NDVI values to predict tallgrass ANPP. This study was conducted using ANPP measurements from a watershed within the Konza Prairie Biological Station (KPBS) as the primary study area, with additional measurements from the Rannells Flint Hills Prairie Preserve (RFHPP) and biennial ANPP measurements by Kansas State University (KSU) students from tallgrass areas near Manhattan, Kansas. Data from the primary study site covered the period of 1989–2005. The optimal period for estimating ANPP using AVHRR NDVI composite data sets was found to be late July. The Tallgrass ANPP Model (TAM) explained 54% (coefficient of determination, R² = 0.54, p < 0.001) of the year-to-year variation in ANPP. The creation of 1.0 km × 1.0 km resolution ANPP maps for a four-county (∼7000 ha) area for years 1989–2007 showed considerable variation in annual and interannual ANPP spatial patterns, suggesting complex interactions among factors influencing ANPP spatially and temporally.
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 (
) 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 (
). Compared to ungrazed areas, reintroducing bison increased native plant species richness by 103% at local scales (10 m
) 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.
Ecosystem responses to increased variability in rainfall, a prediction of general circulation models, were assessed in native grassland by reducing storm frequency and increasing rainfall quantity ...per storm during a 4-year experiment. More extreme rainfall patterns, without concurrent changes in total rainfall quantity, increased temporal variability in soil moisture and plant species diversity. However, carbon cycling processes such as soil CO2flux, CO2uptake by the dominant grasses, and aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) were reduced, and ANPP was more responsive to soil moisture variability than to mean soil water content. Our results show that projected increases in rainfall variability can rapidly alter key carbon cycling processes and plant community composition, independent of changes in total precipitation.
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