2025-2026 Synthesis Groups: Community Call

LTER synthesis working groups bring together data from LTER and other research to discover common principles and mechanisms guiding how ecosystems function. For the March LTER Community Call, we’ll hear from two of our current synthesis groups.

A CROSS-ECOSYSTEM SYNTHESIS EXPLORING CONSEQUENCES OF CONSUMER LOSS ON COMMUNITY VARIABILITY

Presenters:

• Jamie McDevitt-Irwin, Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
• Kelly Speare, Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University

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INTEGRATING ABOVE- AND BELOW-GROUND COMMUNITY DATA TO UNDERSTAND TEMPORAL DYNAMICS AND RESPONSES TO GLOBAL CHANGE

This working group evolved out of a group project in the Synthesis Skills for Early Career Researchers (SSECR) course.

Interconnectedness between plant and microbial communities is increasingly recognized as a key indicator of ecosystem functioning and stability, however few studies investigate both components simultaneously and repeatedly over time. This limits our ability to understand how above- and below-ground communities interact and respond to environmental change, and presents a clear need for a unifying framework to understand these communities in tandem. Our working group is focused on synchrony between plant and soil microbial communities, the extent to which community fluctuations align in direction and magnitude, and aims to address these knowledge gaps. We will share progress from two complementary efforts: 1) A case study exploring how synchrony varies across environmental contexts and disturbance regimes, and 2) a perspective piece proposing a conceptual framework for synchrony that integrates both plant and microbial communities.

In addition, we will present preliminary findings from a data discovery effort that highlights the critical need for more long-term, coupled datasets that track plant and microbial dynamics over time. Together, this work will lay the groundwork for a more integrated understanding of how above- and belowground communities co-vary through time and contribute to ecosystem stability, recovery, and resilience in response to global change. 

Speaker Bios

McKinley Nevins is a PhD candidate in Plant Biology in the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University. Her research has combined above- and below-ground perspectives to improve understanding of the drivers of tree demography in the Northwestern U.S.

Ashley Bulseco is an Assistant Professor in Coastal Microbial & Ecosystem Ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. Her research focuses on microbial community responses to disturbance and their shifting roles in biogeochemical cycling, particularly in coastal ecosystems.

Kaitlyn McKnight is a Ph.D. candidate in the Botany Department and the Program in Ecology and Evolution at the University of Wyoming. Her research examines how climate change reshapes ecological synchrony across spatial and temporal scales, with a focus on tree populations and grassland communities. She integrates long-term datasets with wavelet-based analyses and structural equation modeling to uncover the mechanisms linking climate variability to ecosystem stability and extinction risk.

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The LTER monthly community call provides an opportunity to hold seminars, discussions, and learning opportunities of relevance to the broad LTER research community. These may include research seminars, discussions of emerging projects and methods, or the occasional organizational update.