Date Approved
2026
Degree Type
Open Access Senior Honors Thesis
Department or School
Biology
First Advisor
Emily Grman, Ph.D.
Second Advisor
Katherine Greenwald, Ph.D.
Third Advisor
Ann R. Eisenberg, Ph.D.
Recommended Citation
Cook, Ambrose O., "Soil texture does not affect multi-mutualist system benefits in prairie legumes" (2026). Senior Honors Theses and Projects. 917.
https://commons.emich.edu/honors/917
Comments
In recent years, the restoration of prairies to functional ecosystems has involved consideration of the soil microbial community’s positive role in plant growth and establishment. While general relationships between prairie legumes, rhizobia bacteria, and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi have been found to produce benefits to the plant host, the way these relationships might change with sand content gradients and home soil texture of plants species has not. We conducted a growth chamber experiment, manipulating soil sandiness and mutualist presence across six species of native prairie legumes and comparing harvested biomass as a measure of plant success. We hypothesized that if multi-mutualist benefits are reliant on their host plant’s adaptation to their home soil texture, then biomass of multi-mutualist legumes will decrease as soil texture and resource capacity differs more from the soil and resources they are adapted to. Furthermore, we expected that rhizobia and AM fungi single inoculant plants in sandy soil will produce more biomass due to the lower plant available nitrogen and ability of AM fungi to improve water uptake. Soil sandiness did not change the effects of multi-mutualist systems, but some species behaved differently according to soil type alone and experienced interactions between soil and single inoculants. However, these patterns were not consistent across home soil textures. This implies that legume establishment in prairies may be more dependent on species identity than on broad soil textures.