Shrub encroachment into grasslands has been increasing worldwide, including New Mexico Chihuahuan Desert ecosystems, and this is predicted to increase as CO2 levels rise. The landscape scale pattern of shrub encroachment in the Chihuahuan Desert is due to the spatiotemporal dynamics of coexistence between creosote shrub, Larrea tridentata, and black grama grass, Bouteloua eriopoda. Competition between these two species may be invisibly influenced by plant-soil feedbacks, in which plant species affect each other indirectly through their species-specific microbiomes. 

For this project, we ask:

How do species-specific microbes influence plant-soil feedbacks between creosote and black grama under elevated CO2?

Investigating this question can give us better insight into how plant-soil microbiomes can invisibly influence species coexistence both interspecifically and intraspecifically.