Research highlights 2022

While our research center may be most often associated with studies related to prairies and grasslands, the range of topics extends far beyond this ecosystem, involves collaborators from many other institutions, and is in some cases focused on vast datasets. Survey research falls under three broad, often intersecting categories: terrestrial, aquatic and GIS/analytical studies.

Actively funded projects in 2022 totaled 68. Publications included 62 in peer-reviewed journals, one book and four book chapters, and four other reports and special projects. For a complete list of projects, see our searchable, up-to-date roster of publications and grants.

Here are a few of the year's research activities:

• Sharon Billings, senior scientist and Dean's Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB), received funding through NSF’s Frontier Research in Earth Sciences for the project “Collaborative Research: How roots, regolith, rock and climate interact over decades to centuries — to R3-C Frontier.” The project team, which received nearly $3 million, investigates the top-down (vegetation, microbes) vs. bottom-up (bedrock, minerology) controls on soil structure and how that in turn drives elemental fluxes at the pedon, catchment and continental scales. Partners include Oregon State University, Colorado School of Mines, Kansas State University, Boise State University, Penn State University, and the University of California, Riverside. The project runs through 2025, with $432,000 coming to KU.
  
   
• Liz Koziol, Bryan Foster and Jim Bever, along with former postdoc Guangzhau Wang (Bever/Schultz Lab), published the paper “Microbial mediators of plant community response to long-term N and P fertilization: Evidence of a role of plant responsiveness to mycorrhizal fungi,” in Global Change Biology. The study used Foster’s long-term fertilization experiment to test whether the relationship between plants and mycorrhizal fungi is altered by chronic fertilization—and whether the change in plant-mycorrhizal relationship leads to the declining quality of the prairie plant community. At publication, Koziol was a postdoctoral researcher in the Bever/Schultz Lab. Foster is a senior scientist and professor of EEB. Bever was a a senior scientist and Foundation Distinguished Professor of EEB.
  
   
• Christopher Rogers, associate research professor, reached a milestone with his 200th peer-reviewed publication, “An unavoidably short history of inland aquatic animal diversity research in the U.S. Virgin Islands,” with Edwin Cruz of the University of the Virgin Islands, in the Springer journal Aquatic Ecology.
  
   
• Alex Hoffpauir, Dean Kettle and Helen Alexander published the results of a long-term study with Mead’s milkweed, “Seeding as a restoration technique for a rare prairie plant: An 11-year field experiment with Asclepias meadii,” in the journal Restoration Ecology. At publication, first author Hoffpauir was a postbaccalaureate scholar in the Bever/Schultz Lab. Kettle is former research programs director for the KU Field Station. Alexander is a professor emeritus of EEB. Co-author Steve Roels is a former EEB graduate student, and co-author Aaron Reed is a University of Missouri-Kansas City faculty member and former KU postdoc. 
  
   
• Ben Sikes, associate scientist and associate professor of EEB, participated in the third annual NASA STAR (Spaceflight Technology, Applications and Research) annual virtual course. The space biosciences training course was developed for principal investigators, senior research scientists and postdoctoral scholars. The course led to a $29,793 KU grant, “Ernst 37083X: Space stress of microbial communities,” that provided partial funding for a study of studying microscopic organisms in extreme environments to see if life is possible beyond Earth.