Dan Buckley
Professor, School of Integrative Plant Science Soil and Crop Sciences Section

Buckley is a microbial ecologist in the Soil & Crop Sciences Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science. He investigates the soil microbiome and its impacts on ecosystem health, the plants we grow, the water we drink, and the air we breathe.
Interests
Microbial diversity
Bacterial population structure in soils
Recent Research
Many aspects of soil microbial communities are still a mystery and soil remains a fertile habitat for discovery. Dan Buckley's research makes use of genomic tools to examine the microbial communities that live in soils, to explore their diversity, and to delineate the mechanisms by which they influence environmental processes in terrestrial ecosystems.
Selected Journal Publications
- Emmett, B. D., Youngblut, N. D., Buckley, D. H., & Drinkwater, L. E. (2017). Plant phylogeny and life history shape rhizosphere bacterial microbiome of summer annuals in an agricultural field. Frontiers in Microbiology. 8:1-16.
- Gaby, J. C., & Buckley, D. H. (2017). The Use of Degenerate Primers in qPCR Analysis of Functional Genes Can Cause Dramatic Quantification Bias as Revealed by Investigation of nifH Primer Performance. Microbial Ecology. 74:701-708.
- Wilbanks, E. G., Salman-Carvalho, V., Jaekel, U., Humphrey, P. T., Eisen, J. A., Buckley, D. H., & Zinder, S. H. (2017). The Green Berry Consortia of the Sippewissett Salt Marsh: Millimeter-Sized Aggregates of Diazotrophic Unicellular Cyanobacteria. Frontiers in Microbiology. 8:1-12.
- Pepe-Ranney, C., Koechli, C., Potrafka, R., Andam, C., Eggleston, E., Garcia-Pichel, F., & Buckley, D. H. (2016). Non-cyanobacterial diazotrophs mediate dinitrogen fixation in biological soil crusts during early crust formation. The ISME Journal: Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology. 10:287-298.
- Pepe-Ranney, C., Campbell, A. N., Koechli, C. N., Berthrong, S., & Buckley, D. H. (2016). Unearthing the Ecology of Soil Microorganisms Using a High Resolution DNA-SIP Approach to Explore Cellulose and Xylose Metabolism in Soil. Frontiers in Microbiology. 2016:703.
- Andam, C. P., Doroghazi, J. R., Campbell, A. N., Kelly, P. J., Choudoir, M. J., & Buckley, D. H. (2016). A Latitudinal Diversity Gradient in Terrestrial Bacteria of the Genus Streptomyces. mBio. 7:e02200-15 .
- Whitman, T., Pepe-Ranney, C., Enders, A., Koechli, C., Campbell, A., Buckley, D. H., & Lehmann, J. (2016). Dynamics of microbial community composition and soil organic carbon mineralization in soil following addition of pyrogenic and fresh organic matter. The ISME Journal: Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology. 10:2918-2930.
- Andam, C. P., Choudoir, M. J., Nguyen, A. V., Park, H. S., & Buckley, D. H. (2016). Contributions of ancestral inter-species recombination to the genetic diversity of extant Streptomyces lineages. The ISME Journal: Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology. 10:1731-1741.
- Gaby, J. C., & Buckley, D. H. (2014). A comprehensive aligned nifH gene database: a multi-purpose tool for studies of nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Database. bauoo1.
- Youngblut, N. D., & Buckley, D. H. (2014). Intra-genomic variation in G_+_C content and its implications for DNA stable isotope probing. Environmental Microbiology Reports.
Courses Taught
- BIOG 2990: Introduction to Research Methods in Biology
- PLSCS/BIOMI 1120: Microbes, the Earth, and Everything
Contact Information
705 Bradfield Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
dhb28 [at] cornell.edu
School & Section
Graduate Fields
Education
- Doctorate
Michigan State University
2000
- Bachelor of Science
University of Rochester
1994
More information
- Doctorate
Dan in the news

News
Cornell researchers have developed an innovative technique to track microbes and understand the various ways they process soil carbon, findings that add to our knowledge of how bacteria contribute to the global carbon cycle.
- School of Integrative Plant Science
- Soil and Crop Sciences Section
- Bacteria

News
Congratulations to SIPS Professor Dan Buckley , elected in February as one of 65 new Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology. Fellows represent an honorific leadership group with the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) elected...
- School of Integrative Plant Science
- Soil and Crop Sciences Section
- Microbiology