If you are interested in microbiomes, plants, polyploids, or all of the above stop by the Ecology II talk session Tuesday 22nd to hear some of my postdoc research! #Evol2026
Amanda Rawstern
@arawstern.bsky.social
Post-Doctoral Researcher at University of Pittsburgh in Ashman lab. I study plant-microbe interactions and microbial ecology. arawstern.wixsite.com/home
Can we use ecological principles to increase coexistence in synthetic bacterial communities? Our new paper is now out in @isme-microbes.bsky.social: "Environmental complexity shapes maintenance of bacterial diversity through context-dependent interactions among niche axes" doi.org/10.1093/isme...
Environmental complexity shapes maintenance of bacterial diversity through context-dependent interactions among niche axes
Abstract. Microbial communities are often more species-rich than predicted from classical ecological models. The high levels of coexistence observed in nat
academic.oup.com
Delighted to share my latest TED-Ed video, explaining how scientists discovered that cats use the chemicals from silvervine and catnip to protect themselves against mosquitoes. This discovery may open the way to the development of new mosquito repellents for human use. ed.ted.com/lessons/why-...
Why does catnip make cats go crazy? - Jaap de Roode
Of the many bewildering behaviors cats display, one of the strangest is their obsession with a specific species of plant. After just one whiff, even the most stoic cat can start pawing, drooling, biti...
ed.ted.com
Even though its been out on early view our publication is now officially included in the Plant, Cell & Environment special issue Legumes adaptations and interactions with the environment! Check out here: doi.org/10.1111/pce....
Non‐Additive Interactions Between Multiple Mutualists and Host Plant Genotype Simultaneously Promote Increased Plant Growth and Pathogen Defence
This study finds that plant genotypes with high-quality symbioses from multiple microbial mutualists are larger/more robust and most likely to survive pathogen stress. This provides novel evidence th...
doi.org
Rhizosphere microbiome influences fruit quality in citrus Wu et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/9W2EUQ...
Deciphering microbial interactions using a label-free microbead sorting approach academic.oup.com/ismecommun/a... #jcampubs
Deciphering microbial interactions using a label-free microbead sorting approach
Abstract. Microorganisms form communities, and their interactions shape the function and stability of these communities. Understanding these interactions c
academic.oup.com
Microbial communities can harbor many species that do not coexist in pairs, yet can coexist in the full community. Here we provide the mathematical foundations of emergent coexistence, and explain why it can't be predicted from pairwise tests journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
Cross-feeding options define genome evolution and community assembly of deep groundwater microbiome #microbiology #microbiome #MicroSky @microbiomej.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Cross-feeding options define genome evolution and community assembly of deep groundwater microbiome - Environmental Microbiome
Background Deep groundwaters populated by diverse and active microbes are among the most energy and nutrient-limited ecosystems. Characteristics of this ecosystem (including nutrient and dispersal lim...
link.springer.com
Our work on 'hidden diversity' in unbinned contigs is now published in @natmicrobiol.nature.com : www.nature.com/articles/s41... See the linked threads for more details!
Unbinned contigs expand known diversity in the global microbiome - Nature Microbiology
Re-analysis of over 92,000 metagenomes reveals hundreds of thousands of previously undescribed Bacterial and Archaeal clades hidden in plain sight.
nature.com
Sebastian Schmidt@tsbschm.bsky.social · 9mo agoWe've updated our recent @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social on 'Hidden but discoverable diversity in the global microbiome', led by @vishnuprasoodanan.bsky.social & @omaistrenko.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Metagenomics is great, but applying it to soil is... complicated 🦠⛏️ Our new Perspective Article is out, diving into the the opportunities and limitations of metagenomics to study soil bacteria and archaea link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Digging deeper into soil metagenomics: opportunities and limitations for studying the genomic potential of soil bacteria and archaea - Biology and Fertility of Soils
Soil microbial ecology has been transformed by recent progress in sequencing and metagenomics, reshaping our understanding of soil microbial functions. This article examines how metagenomics can be us...
link.springer.com
Quantifying microbiota impact on plant traits for the guidance of breeding programs Blouin et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
www.nature.com/articles/s41... Very neat agricultural microbiome research. There was legacy effect of potato plant vigor based on what production field it was grown in.
Seed tuber microbiome can predict growth potential of potato varieties - Nature Microbiology
Time-resolved drone imaging of potato crop development and seed tuber microbiome data can be used to predict potato vigour, or growth potential, in next-season crops in trial fields.
nature.com
Excited to announce our new journal from @isme-microbes.bsky.social ISME Host Microbe is live and now accepting submissions. Look forward to receiving your papers! #Microsky 🧫 🦠
Happy to share our latest work in collaboration with the lab of @pengbo10.bsky.social. Here, we describe that a formin protein mediates the polarity switch from root hair to infection thread growth during symbiotic interactions. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Nanodomain-localized formin gates symbiotic microbial entry in legume and solanaceous plants
Colonization of plant roots by symbionts requires substantial morphodynamic reorganization. Examples are actin-scaffolded microcompartments called infection pockets formed during root nodule symbiosis...
science.org
Excited to share this preprint that describes my latest work on using GPUs to accelerate processing of RNA-seq data. The title says it all: "RNA-seq analysis in seconds using GPUs" now on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... and github github.com/pachterlab/k... Figure 1 shows they key result
New paper showing that bacteria with more genes for cooperation can live in a broader range of habitats and that genes for cooperation are more more likely to be in the accessory genome www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @lauriebelch.bsky.social
I think this paper will be a game-changer for studying microbiome function. Matthew Schmitt and I found that a simple neural network, when trained on paired sequencing and functional data, can infer functional group structure directly from data. Pls read our preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Are you a postdoc in a plant-related field such as🌿 Plant Biology 🌿 Agriculture & Crop Sciences 🌿 Ecology & Environment 🌿 Plant Pathology & Protection or 🌿 Biotechnology ? We invite you to join a community of 700+ postdoctoral researchers from around the world at www.plantpostdocs.com
Evolution of crop phenotypic spaces through domestication 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... by Wojcik et al. @maudtenaillon.bsky.social #PlantScience
This is an incredible resource: The MicrobeAtlas Database www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
The MicrobeAtlas database: Global trends and insights into Earth’s microbial ecosystems
MicrobeAtlas (www.microbeatlas.org) is an integrated, reference-based resource for truly planet-wide microbiomics, analyzing hundreds of thousands of microbial lineages across diverse environments, co...
cell.com
Hot off the press! If you’ve ever wondered how ecosystem-engineering gopher tortoises shape soil microbial and nematode communities, this paper is for you! 🐢💚 link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Gopher tortoise influence on soil biodiversity is constrained by historical land use - Biodiversity and Conservation
Keystone species and ecosystem engineers play critical roles in maintaining and enhancing biodiversity by modifying their environment and creating ecological niches that support a wide range of organi...
link.springer.com
How #citrus rewires its vascular system to fight #huanglongbing ... | #pathogen | #bacteria | #Liberibacter | Via eurekalert .org
How citrus rewires its vascular system to fight huanglongbing
Huanglongbing (HLB) is one of the most destructive diseases threatening global citrus production, yet how citrus plants respond to the pathogen at the cellular level has remained unclear.
eurekalert.org
Latitudinal patterns of surface bacterial community Li et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/WHUPK2...
#TansleyReview: Why, when, and how microbes can benefit ecological restorations: current approaches and future directions 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... by Crawford et al. @kerricrawford.bsky.social @collingdice.bsky.social Figure created in biorender.com/iwso49n.
Take a look at our paper on the soil microbiomes associated with the eastern Joshua tree after the 2020 dome fire! @arikchou.bsky.social @pulidofabs.bsky.social Lynn Sweet melanie davis link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Mojave Desert microbial communities show high resistance and resilience over three years despite widespread plant mortality following the Dome Fire - Fire Ecology
Background High severity desert fires are uncommon but typically chart a new successional trajectory altering plant communities for at least 65 years. These aboveground vegetation shifts can have larg...
link.springer.com
A novel analysis workflow for simultaneous parsing prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbial genes from metagenomes peerj.com/articles/207... #jcampubs
A novel analysis workflow for simultaneous parsing prokaryotic and eukaryotic microbial genes from metagenomes
Accurately predicting coding genes from metagenomic samples containing a high proportion of eukaryotic content remains a significant challenge. Novel and reliable methods for the simultaneous predicti...
peerj.com
From death comes diversity! 🦠🧪🌐🌏 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
From death comes diversity - Nature Ecology & Evolution
A high-throughput laboratory experiment tracking the assembly of soil-derived communities shows that species-rich bacterial necromass supports increasingly diverse communities, with each additional de...
nature.com
Community conservatism is widespread across microbial phyla and environments #microbiology #microbes #MicroSky @natecoevo.nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Community conservatism is widespread across microbial phyla and environments - Nature Ecology & Evolution
This study reveals that closely related microorganisms tend to inhabit similar communities across all major environments and phyla. The authors term this phenomenon ‘community conservatism’, extending...
nature.com
(1/8) 🚨Thrilled to share our new research, now published on the cover of @science.org ! 🌳🦠 We discovered that tree #Bark — largely regarded as inert — hosts vast #Microbial communities that actively interact with the atmosphere. 🧵👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
New paper up - inspired by the periodic table of the elements, we attempted to organize bacterial diversity in genome-inferred trait space academic.oup.com/ismej/advanc...
Constructing a “periodic table” of bacteria to map diversity in trait space
Abstract. Despite an ever-expanding number of bacterial taxa being discovered, many of these taxa remain uncharacterized with unknown traits and environmen
academic.oup.com