A primary aim of microbial ecology is to determine patterns and drivers of community distribution, interaction, and assembly amidst complexity and uncertainty. Microbial community composition has been shown to change across gradients of environment, geographic distance, salinity, temperature, oxygen, nutrients, pH, day length, and biotic factors 1-6 . These patterns have been identified mostly by focusing on one sample type and region at a time, with insights extra polated across environments and geography to produce generalized principles. To assess how microbes are distributed across environments globally-or whether microbial community dynamics follow funda mental ecological 'laws' at a planetary scale-requires either a massive monolithic cross environment survey or a practical methodology for coordinating many independent surveys. New studies of microbial environments are rapidly accumulating; however, our ability to extract meaningful information from across datasets is outstripped by the rate of data generation. Previous meta analyses have suggested robust gen eral trends in community composition, including the importance of salinity 1 and animal association 2 . These findings, although derived from relatively small and uncontrolled sample sets, support the util ity of meta analysis to reveal basic patterns of microbial diversity and suggest that a scalable and accessible analytical framework is needed.The Earth Microbiome Project (EMP, http://www.earthmicrobiome. org) was founded in 2010 to sample the Earth's microbial communities at an unprecedented scale in order to advance our understanding of the organizing biogeographic principles that govern microbial commu nity structure 7,8 . We recognized that open and collaborative science, including scientific crowdsourcing and standardized methods 8 , would help to reduce technical variation among individual studies, which can overwhelm biological variation and make general trends difficult to detect 9 . Comprising around 100 studies, over half of which have yielded peer reviewed publications (Supplementary Table 1), the EMP has now dwarfed by 100 fold the sampling and sequencing depth of earlier meta analysis efforts 1,2 ; concurrently, powerful analysis tools have been developed, opening a new and larger window into the distri bution of microbial diversity on Earth. In establishing a scalable frame work to catalogue microbiota globally, we provide both a resource for the exploration of myriad questions and a starting point for the guided acquisition of new data to answer them. As an example of using this Our growing awareness of the microbial world's importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of r...

Selenium (Se)-rich plants may be used to provide dietary Se to humans and livestock, and also to clean up Se-polluted soils or waters. This study focused on endophytic bacteria of plants that hyperaccumulate selenium (Se) to 0.5–1% of dry weight. Terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis was used to compare the diversity of endophytic bacteria of hyperaccumulators Stanleya pinnata (Brassicaceae) and Astragalus bisulcatus (Fabaceae) with those from related non-accumulators Physaria bellii (Brassicaceae) and Medicago sativa (Fabaceae) collected on the same, seleniferous site. Hyperaccumulators and non-accumulators showed equal T-RF diversity. Parsimony analysis showed that T-RFs from individuals of the same species were more similar to each other than to those from other species, regardless of plant Se content or spatial proximity. Cultivable endophytes from hyperaccumulators S. pinnata and A. bisulcatus were further identified and characterized. The 66 bacterial morphotypes were shown by MS MALDI-TOF Biotyper analysis and 16S rRNA gene sequencing to include strains of Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Pantoea, Staphylococcus, Paenibacillus, Advenella, Arthrobacter, and Variovorax. Most isolates were highly resistant to selenate and selenite (up to 200 mM) and all could reduce selenite to red elemental Se, reduce nitrite and produce siderophores. Seven isolates were selected for plant inoculation and found to have plant growth promoting properties, both in pure culture and when co-cultivated with crop species Brassica juncea (Brassicaceae) or M. sativa. There were no effects on plant Se accumulation. We conclude that Se hyperaccumulators harbor an endophytic bacterial community in their natural seleniferous habitat that is equally diverse to that of comparable non-accumulators. The hyperaccumulator endophytes are characterized by high Se resistance, capacity to produce elemental Se and plant growth promoting properties.

The Neotropical fern genera Eriosorus and Jamesonia have long been thought of as close relatives. Molecular phylogenetic studies have confirmed this notion but have also revealed that neither genus is monophyletic with respect to the other. As a result, all known species of Eriosorus were recently subsumed under the older generic name Jamesonia. Here, through an analysis of a four-gene plastid dataset, we show that several species traditionally treated in Eriosorus are in fact more closely related to other taenitidoid fern genera (namely Austrogramme, Pterozonium, Syngramma, and Taenitis) than they are to the large Jamesonia sensu lato clade. Tryonia Schuettp., J.Prado & A.T.Cochran gen. nov. is described to accommodate these species and four new combinations are provided. Tryonia is confined to southeastern Brazil and adjacent Uruguay; it is distinct (from most species of Jamesonia) in having stramineous rachises.

M (2016). A revised generic classification of vittarioid ferns (Pteridaceae) based on molecular, micromorphological, and geographic data. Taxon, 65(4):708-722.

Little is known about the microbiomes associated with plants with unusual properties, including plants that hyperaccumulate toxic elements such as selenium (Se). Se hyperaccumulators contain up to 1.5% of their dry weight in Se, concentrations shown to affect ecological interactions with herbivores, fungal pathogens and neighboring plants. Hyperaccumulators also enrich their surrounding soil with Se, which may alter the rhizobiome. To investigate whether plant Se affects rhizobacterial diversity and composition, we used a combination of culture-independent and culture-based approaches. Sequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons using the Illumina platform revealed that the rhizosphere microbiomes of Se hyperaccumulators were significantly different from nonaccumulators from the same site, with a higher average relative abundance of Pedobacter and Deviosa. Additionally, hyperaccumulators harbored a higher rhizobacterial species richness when compared with nonaccumulators from the same family on the same site. Independent from Se present at the site or in the host plant, the bacterial isolates were extremely resistant to selenate and selenite (up to 200 mM) and could reduce selenite to elemental Se. In conclusion, Se hyperaccumulation does not appear to negatively affect rhizobacterial diversity, and may select for certain taxa in the rhizosphere microbiome. Additionally, Se resistance in hyperaccumulator-associated bacteria and archaea may be widespread and not under selection by the host plant.