With the Peay lab, we had an end-of-year joint lab party on December 13, 2012. Over treats and drinks, everyone talked about their favorite paper of the year. This event, suggested and hosted by Jenny, was so fun (and nerdy) that we hope to make it a joint lab tradition. So, here are the best papers of the year (or some other year), according to us.

Best papers of 2012


Adler LS, Seifert MG, Wink M, Morse GE. 2012. Reliance on pollinators predicts defensive chemistry across tobacco species. Ecology Letters 15: 1140-1148.

Baldrian P, Kolarik M, Stursova M, Kopecky J, Valaskova V, Vetrovsky T, Zifcakova L, Snajdr J, Ridl J, Vlcek C, Voriskova J. 2012. Active and total microbial communities in forest soil are largely different and highly stratified during decomposition. The ISME Journal 6:248-258.

Colman DR, Toolson EC, Takacs-Vesbach CD. 2012. Do diet and taxonomy influence insect gut bacterial communities? Molecular Ecology 21:5124-5137.

Evans JD, Schwarz RS. 2011. Bees brought to their knees: microbes affecting honey bee health. Trends in Microbiology 19:614-620.

Hulcr J, Latimer AM, Henley JB, Rountree NR, Fierer N, Lucky A, Lowman MD, Dunn RR. 2012. A jungle in there: bacteria in belly buttons are highly diverse, but predictable. PLoS ONE 7:e47712.

Kennedy PG, Smith DP, Horton TR, Molina RJ. 2012. Arbutus menziesii (Ericaceae) facilitates regeneration dynamics in mixed evergreen forests by promoting mycorrhizal fungal diversity and host connectivity. American Journal of Botany 99:1691-1701.

Koele N, Dickie IA, Oleksyn J, Richardson SJ, Reich PB. 2012. No globally consistent effect of ectomycorrhizal status on foliar traits. New Phytologist 196:845-852.

Lee SS, Lim KL. 1989. Mycorrhizal infection and foliar phosphorus content of seedlings of three dipterocarp species growing in a selectively logged forest and a forest plantation. Plant and Soil 117:237-241.

Moss-Racusin CA, Dovidio JF, Brescoll VL, Graham MJ, Handelsman J. 2012. Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109:16474-16479.

Myers JA, Chase JM, Jimenez I, Jorgensen PM, Araujo-Murakami A, Paniagua-Zambrana N, Seidel R. 2012. Beta-diversity in temperate and tropical forests reflects dissimilar mechanisms of community assembly. Ecology Letters Epub ahead of print.

Page RD. 2012. Space, time, form: viewing the Tree of Life. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 27:113-120.

Retallack GJ. 2012. Ediacaran life on land. Nature Published online.