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Griffy Lake
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Bayles Road
 

Bayle's Road

The Bayles Road addition is located about 3 miles north of town off of Walnut Street, just past Cascades Park on the way towards 37N and just west of Taylor’s par 3 golf course and the Thompson Furniture store. The site is approximately 33 acres in size and historically was used for research in corn genetics by Biology Professors Marcus Rhoades, Drew Schwartz and others. The property is mostly agricultural land and open fields but there are also smaller areas of forest, wetlands and aquatic habitats. Presently it is used intensively for common garden type experiments (Clay lab, Reynolds lab, Bever lab) and several laboratory courses. The site has also been used by Butch Brodie, Ellen Ketterson and Vicky Meretsky (SPEA), a variety of graduate students, and the Indiana University Nursery. It has also been used by faculty at other universities (e.g. Miami University of Ohio, Rice University). Jennifer Rudgers, a former post-doc at IU and new faculty member at Rice University, just received 5 years of NSF funding for her project at Bayles Road. The open fields have an irrigation system but there is no power or buildings at the site, except for a very small storage shed.

Quick Facts

Driving time from campus: 10-15 min. Date Acquired by IU: March 8, 1965
Nearby Public Land: Lake Griffy preserves, both City of Bloomington and IU. Current Land Use: Vegetative experiments with grasses, sedges, and early succession trees. Ruckleshaus dedicated carbon sequestration grove and prairie
Land Forms: Bottomlands of Griffy Creek.
Vegetation: Fencerows with trees (Black Walnut, Tulip Poplar, Black Cherry and Boxelder). Old agricultural fields with grasses, sedges and forbs.
Soils: Haymond, Stendal, Wakeland, and Wilbur soil series.
Access: The Bayle's Road site is not available to the public.

 

Relevant Publications

  1. Clay, K., Holah, J. and J. A. Rudgers. 2005. Herbivores cause a rapid increase in hereditary symbiosis and alter plant community composition. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 102:12465-12470.
  2. Finkes, L. K., Rudgers, J. A., Cady, A. B., Clay, K. and J. C. Mulroy. 2005. A fungal mutualist
    affects the composition of spiders in an old field. Ecology Letters (in press).
  3. Lemons, A., Clay, K. and J. A. Rudgers. 2005. Connecting plant-microbial interactions above-and belowground: a fungal endophyte affects decomposition. Oecologia 145:595-604.
  4. Orr, S. P., Rudgers, J. A. and K. Clay. 2005. Invasive plants can inhibit native tree seedlings: Testing the novel weapons hypothesis. Plant Ecology 181: 153-165.
  5. Rajaniemi, T. K. and H. L. Reynolds. 2004. Root foraging for patchy resources in eight herbaceous plant species. Oecologia 141:519-525.
  6. Rudgers, J. A., Koslow, J.M. and K. Clay. 2004. Endophytic fungi alter relationships between diversity and ecosystem processes. Ecology Letters 7: 42-51.

View the Preserve's Complete Bibliography