Putting the FAB in fabulous

A former Cedar Creek intern elevates their summer research project by getting it published.
February 03, 2025

A few months after completing an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science from Rice University in Houston, Texas, Louisiana-born Reb Bryant arrived at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve intent on a future studying prairies. Interning at one of the world’s largest and longest running grassland ecological experiments was set to be a career-altering experience for Bryant. 

Nearly five years later, Bryant is still reaping the benefits of investing heart and soul into an independent research opportunity offered as part of Cedar Creek’s summer internship program. With the guidance and support of then-graduate students Craig See and Shan Kothari, Bryant and other interns in the independent research team used data collected during the summer of 2019 to author a publication for the journal Ecological Applications. The article, published earlier this fall, investigates the nuanced differences between above- and below-ground carbon accumulation in Cedar Creek’s Forest and Biodiversity (FAB) experiment.

The publication went way beyond what they expected to achieve from a summer doing research in rural Minnesota. “It started as an intern project with no intent to publish,” says Bryant, who worked with fellow interns Stephanie Curran, Grace Neumiller, Charlotte Nash, to collect data from FAB as a team for Cedar Creek’s intern research symposium at the end of the season. They also recruited the aid of interns Corina Godoy and Dav Sannerud in data collection. “It was my first project working in terrestrial ecology,” says Bryant, now a graduate student at the University of Kansas. “It taught me a lot of skills, not just about the topic, but also how to look at things statistically. Like, how do we design [an experiment like this]?”

A sweet summer

Cedar Creek intern crawls through the forest floor of the Forest and Biodiversity experiment.
Plots in the Forest and Biodiversity experiment can be dense and difficult to crawl through.

Maintenance and data collection for experiments across the station require an extensive crew, the largest three being: the Grassland Biodiversity (“Big Bio”) experiment, the Grassland Biodiversity & Global Change experiment (BioCON), and the Forest and Biodiversity (FAB) experiment. Bryant was one of a few dozen interns at the station that supported these experiments in 2019. 

Before they arrive, station staff assign each intern to one or two of these experiments. Bryant was assigned to the “Big Bio” team, and occasionally departed to aid in the FAB experiment, which primarily studies the effects of tree diversity on ecosystem functioning and has plots with varying degrees of tree diversity. 

Most of the annual data collection in FAB looks at above-ground ecosystem functioning. But Bryant, who has an interest in investigating the mutualistic relationships between fungi and plants, had other ideas for  their personal research project. “I was really interested in looking at the mycorrhizal component [of FAB],” says Bryant. Mycorrhizae are fungal networks that can live inside of or connected to plant tissue, such as roots. Research indicates they play a critical role in nutrient cycling. And since some trees have an affinity for partnerships with specific types of mycorrhizal fungi species, Bryant thought to look at the bigger picture of carbon accumulation below-ground in the FAB experiment. 

In other words, Bryant wanted to start untangling the relationship between types of biodiversity and what unknown forces, like fungi, might be at work to affect the nutrient composition of soil. “Me, the three other interns, Craig and a few others spent half a day in FAB with PVC pipes and hammers,” says Bryant, describing a common way to take soil cores by hammering a pipe into the ground, pulling it up and analyzing the content inside. They looked at root biomass, soil carbon, and soil aggregates, with each intern taking a different variable to focus on. “We learned a lot of methods for looking at soils. It was really cool.”

Reb stands in a washing shed in a pair of yellow waders. Reb is holding roots that are being washed down with a hose.
Bryant washes roots from soil samples in the Cedar Creek root-washing station.

Fall into winter into spring, lock-down, that is

Soon after Bryant left for their next chapter, the world went into lock-down. The years following gave Bryant, See, and Kothari ample time to ponder if there were any next steps available for the intern’s summer data set. “We thought it would be really cool to publish this somewhere. Just so it’s out there,” says Bryant. “And then we kept bringing in more and more data, such as about the soil microbes and above-ground carbon.” Kothari brought in data on above-ground carbon accumulation in FAB and had a lot of good insight into modeling data for the experiment. “It just snow-balled.”

Their findings painted a nuanced picture of the differences that can occur in above- and below-ground carbon accumulation. One would assume that an increase of carbon accumulation in above-ground tree tissue would correlate with an increase in carbon below ground. The results in their publication indicated this is not the case in FAB. Weak correlations between tree-fungi relationships and carbon accumulation showed that microbes might have something to do with it.

“Above- and below-ground carbon are not directly related, they're still independent,” says See, “But biodiversity still has a positive effect on both. It would be interesting to see what kinds of results we could show with even more data.” 

The project showed Bryant the scale and scope of what collaborative research can look like. Connecting the complex layers of data was a feat not even See, who’s now a researcher in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resources, or Kothari, who’s now an assistant professor at the University of Alberta, imagined pursuing to the lengths Bryant did. “It’s super impressive Reb got this together,” says See, “Because it was a beast of a paper. The data set doubled, and things kept adding up. It was awesome, is what I’m saying.” – Adara Taylor