Monarch caterpillars feed on milkweeds and Colias on legumes like Chamaecrista and Senna in the summer. Late-flowering forbs help support their migrations as butterflies. Feeling so inspired by how AMF inoculation boosts forb and insect diversity in these plots across the season.

Almost all of our trials are started at restoration initiation. There was one trial where native plants were overseeded into brome monoculture w/o removal. We applied native AMF to native seedling roots — those seedlings established better and showed measurable seed-establishment effects nearby.

Yes, it's moved from theory to practice. We take a few tablespoons of remnant soil, grow the AM fungi and other key microbes like Rhizobia in the lab, and have applied them in ~50 restoration experiments across the prairie range...with success. Now we’re figuring out how to make this work at scale.

Exactly. Forestry has been using mycorrhizal inoculants as standard practice for decades. Time for managed grasslands to catch up.

And the lesson already learned from forestry? Native is key—non-native inoculants can wreck ecosystems.

We pull AM fungi from nearby remnants sites, so they’re local/native.

As for convincing—the data speak: inoculated sites see better late successional seed recruitment and fewer weeds. We’ve shown this in field trials across the tallgrass range—IN to KS, TX to Canada.

This rare long-term evidence that restoring remnant belowground biodiversity can restore aboveground biodiversity. Moreover, fewer non-native plants means less management. 🌏

We added NATIVE arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) to a grassland restoration and tracked outcomes. Seven years later we asked: do the benefits still last"?

We found AMF additions resulted in:
🌻Higher floristic quality
🌿Sustained plant diversity
🌾Strong weed suppression

Restorations can struggle long-term: weeds persist, grasses can dominate, and native diversity can stall or fade. Many native grassland species are highly dependent on soil microbes. Yet, soil microbes are rarely considered in large-scale restoration projects.