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1. A Reference Genome Assembly of American Bison, Bison bison bison

   https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/esab003  

   Oppenheimer, Jonas ; Rosen, Benjamin D ; Heaton, Michael P ; Vander Ley, Brian L ; Shafer, Wade R ; Schuetze, Fred T ; Stroud, Brad ; Kuehn, Larry A ; McClure, Jennifer C ; Barfield, Jennifer P ; et al ( February 2021 , Journal of Heredity)

   Koepfli, Klaus-Peter (Ed.)

   Abstract Bison are an icon of the American West and an ecologically, commercially, and culturally important species. Despite numbering in the hundreds of thousands today, conservation concerns remain for the species, including the impact on genetic diversity of a severe bottleneck around the turn of the 20th century and genetic introgression from domestic cattle. Genetic diversity and admixture are best evaluated at genome-wide scale, for which a high-quality reference is necessary. Here, we use trio binning of long reads from a bison–Simmental cattle (Bos taurus taurus) male F1 hybrid to sequence and assemble the genome of the American plains bison (Bison bison bison). The male haplotype genome is chromosome-scale, with a total length of 2.65 Gb across 775 scaffolds (839 contigs) and a scaffold N50 of 87.8 Mb. Our bison genome is ~13× more contiguous overall and ~3400× more contiguous at the contig level than the current bison reference genome. The bison genome sequence presented here (ARS-UCSC_bison1.0) will enable new research into the evolutionary history of this iconic megafauna species and provide a new tool for the management of bison populations in federal and commercial herds. 

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2. Integrated evidence‐based extent of occurrence for North American bison ( Bison bison ) since 1500 CE and before

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3864  

   Martin, Jeff M. ; Short, Rachel A. ; Plumb, Glenn E. ; Markewicz, Lauren ; Van Vuren, Dirk H. ; Wehus‐Tow, Bradly ; Otarola‐Castillo, Erik ; Hill, Matthew E. ( September 2022 , Ecology)
3. Microbial Dispersal, Including Bison Dung Vectored Dispersal, Increases Soil Microbial Diversity in a Grassland Ecosystem

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2022.825193  

   Hawkins, Jaide H. ; Zeglin, Lydia H. ( March 2022 , Frontiers in Microbiology)

   Microbial communities display biogeographical patterns that are driven by local environmental conditions and dispersal limitation, but the relative importance of underlying dispersal mechanisms and their consequences on community structure are not well described. High dispersal rates can cause soil microbial communities to become more homogenous across space and therefore it is important to identify factors that promote dispersal. This study experimentally manipulated microbial dispersal within different land management treatments at a native tallgrass prairie site, by changing the relative openness of soil to dispersal and by simulating vector dispersal via bison dung addition. We deployed experimental soil bags with mesh open or closed to dispersal, and placed bison dung over a subset of these bags, to areas with three different land managements: active bison grazing and annual fire, annual fire but no bison grazing, and no bison grazing with infrequent fire. We expected microbial dispersal to be highest in grazed and burned environments, and that the addition of dung would consistently increase overall microbial richness and lead to homogenization of communities over time. Results show that dispersal rates, as the accumulation of taxa over the course of the 3-month experiment, increase taxonomic richness similarly in all land management treatments. Additionally, bison dung seems to be serving as a dispersal and homogenization vector, based on the consistently higher taxon richness and increased community similarity across contrasting grazing and fire treatments when dung is added. This finding also points to microbial dispersal as an important function that herbivores perform in grassland ecosystems, and in turn, as a function that was lost at a continental scale following bison extermination across the Great Plains of North America in the nineteenth century. This study is the first to detect that dispersal and vector dispersal by grazing mammals promote grassland soil microbial diversity and affect microbial community composition. 

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4. Bison limit ecosystem recovery in northern Yellowstone

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fooweb.2020.e00142  

   Beschta, Robert L. ; Ripple, William J. ; Kauffman, J. Boone ; Painter, Luke E. ( June 2020 , Food Webs)
5. Initial Responses of Dung Beetle Communities to Bison Reintroduction in Restored and Remnant Tallgrass Prairie

   https://doi.org/10.3375/043.039.0405  

   Barber, Nicholas A. ; Hosler, Sheryl C. ; Whiston, Peyton ; Jones, Holly P. ( September 2019 , Natural Areas Journal)