LTER Cross-site: The Relative Importance of Organic Material vs Local Environmental Conditions on Microbial Decomposer Communities: A Cross-site Comparison

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Mills, Aaron LUniversity of VirginiaDEB 0087256" The relative importance of organic material vs. local environmental conditions on microbial decomposer communities: a cross-site comparison"This work will address the issue of the relative importance of plant litter vs. local environmental conditions in determining the community composition of decomposers. Communities from 10 Atlantic estuarine sites, including four LTER sites (the Virginia Coast Reserve, Georgia Coastal site, Plum Island Estuary, Florida Everglades) and six other research sites will be used. Three types of plant litter (smooth cordgrass, red mangrove, and the locally dominant high marsh plant species) will be compared to test the effect of local environment on the decomposer community for that plant species. During decomposition, samples will be collected at 1, 2, 6, 12, and 18 months and a combination of molecular and culture techniques will be done to assess microbial communities. Cultures will be frozen and stored as a library that can be accessed and examined as needed to compare the composition of the culturable fraction of the microbial community with that obtained with the molecular methods.