Digital Commons Network^™

Changing Blow Fly (Diptera: Calliphoridae) Populations In Orlando, Florida, United States, Amanda Roe, Russell J. Barnes, Leon G. Higley, Neal H. Haskell

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Blow flies (Diptera: Calliphoridae) were collected from various carrion baits in Orlando, Florida over 2 periods: Jun 2009 to Sep 2009 and Apr 2010 to Oct 2010. In a previous study conducted from 2002 to 2004 the dominant blow fly in Orlando, Florida, was Lucilia coeruleiviridis Macquart (Gruner et al. 2007). This collection documents a shift to Chrysomya megacephala Fabricius, as the most dominant blow fly species found in Orlando, Florida in 2009 to 2010. These field results have potential forensic implications, particularly in the analysis of cold cases.

Global Distribution And Richness Of Armillaria And Related Species Inferred From Public Databases And Amplicon Sequencing Datasets, Rachel A. Koch, Joshua Herr

Department of Plant Pathology: Faculty Publications

Armillaria is a globally distributed fungal genus most notably composed of economically important plant pathogens that are found predominantly in forest and agronomic systems. The genus sensulato has more recently received attention for its role in woody plant decomposition and in mycorrhizal symbiosis with specific plants. Previous phylogenetic analyses suggest that around 50 species are recognized globally. Despite this previous work, no studies have analyzed the global species richness and distribution of the genus using data derived from fungal community sequencing datasets or barcoding initiatives. To assess the global diversity and species richness of Armillaria, we mined publicly available sequencing …

A Global Edna Comparison Of Freshwater Bacterioplankton Assemblages Focusing On Large-River Floodplain Lakes Of Brazil, Michael Tessler, Mercer R. Brugler, Rob Desalle, Rebecca Hersch, Luiz Felipe M. Velho, Bianca T. Segovia, Fabio A. Lansac-Toha, Michael J. Lemke

Publications and Research

With its network of lotic and lentic habitats that shift during changes in seasonal connection, the tropical and subtropical large-river systems represent possibly the most dynamic of all aquatic environments. Pelagic water samples were collected from Brazilian floodplain lakes (total n = 58) in four floodpulsed systems (Amazon [n = 21], Araguaia [n = 14], Paraná [n = 15], and Pantanal [n = 8]) in 2011–2012 and sequenced via 454 for bacterial environmental DNA using 16S amplicons; additional abiotic field and laboratory measurements were collected for the assayed lakes.We report here a global comparison of the bacterioplankton makeup of freshwater …

Discovery And Delimitation: Criconematid Nematodes Of North American Grasslands, Magdalena Jean Olson

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Approximately 200 years ago, North American landscapes were dominated by vast expanses of grassland. The Great Plains, an ecologically complex and diverse ecoregion, extended from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Rocky Mountains to the border of the eastern hardwood forest in Indiana. Now the original tallgrass prairie exists in small widely dispersed remnant patches surrounded by agroecosystems. This study is an effort to characterize soil nematode diversity and population structure within those remnant patches. The plant parasitic nematode family Criconematidae serves as our indicator for nematode diversity, due to its global distribution, high abundance in natural …

Rarefaction And Extrapolation With Hill Numbers: A Framework For Sampling And Estimation In Species Diversity Studies, Anne Chao, Nicholas J. Gotelli, T. C. Hsieh, Elizabeth L. Sander, K. H. Ma, Robert K. Colwell, Aaron M. Ellison

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Quantifying and assessing changes in biological diversity are central aspects of many ecological studies, yet accurate methods of estimating biological diversity from sampling data have been elusive. Hill numbers, or the effective number of species, are increasingly used to characterize the taxonomic, phylogenetic, or functional diversity of an assemblage. However, empirical estimates of Hill numbers, including species richness, tend to be an increasing function of sampling effort and, thus, tend to increase with sample completeness. Integrated curves based on sampling theory that smoothly link rarefaction (interpolation) and prediction (extrapolation) standardize samples on the basis of sample size or sample completeness …

Liana Communities In Three Tropical Forest Types In Xishuangbanna, South-West China, Zhi-Quan Cai, Stefan A. Schnitzer, Yu-Long Zheng, Frans Bongers

Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Lianas are an important growth form in tropical forests around the world. However, they are relatively unknown in south-east Asia. We identified, measured and determined the climbing and dispersal modes for lianas in five 0.1-ha plots in three common forest types at the tropical-temperate transitional zone in Xishuangbanna, SW China, namely, montane forest, evergreen broad-leaved forest and seasonally wet forest. Liana diversity in the three forests combined was high; we found a total of 147 liana species, representing 48 families and 75 genera. The mean density of lianas was 3407 ha-1 and varied significantly between the three forests, with 445, …

Comparative Bacterial Diversity In Recent Hawaiian Volcanic Deposits Of Different Ages, Vicente Gomez-Alvarez, Gary M. King, Klaus Nüsslein

Faculty Publications

Volcanic activity creates new landforms that can change dramatically over time as a consequence of biotic succession. Nonetheless, volcanic deposits present severe constraints for microbial colonization and activity. We have characterized bacterial diversity on four recent deposits at Kilauea volcano, Hawaii (KVD). Much of the diversity was either closely related to uncultured organisms or distinct from any reported 16S rRNA gene sequences. Diversity indices suggested that diversity was highest in a moderately vegetated 210-year-old ash deposit (1790-KVD), and lowest for a 79-year-old lava flow (1921-KVD). Diversity for a 41-year-old tephra deposit (1959-KVD) and a 300-year-old rainforest (1700-KVD) reached intermediate values. …

Diversity And Movement Patterns Of Passerine Birds Near An Urban Center On Santa Cruz, Galapagos Islands, Ana M. Gabela

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Many insights into ecological and evolutionary processes have come from studies of island systems. Diversity, abundance, and movement of species are restricted on smaller islands, but these dynamics can become increasingly complex as island size increases.

In recent decades urbanization and the human population on the Galápagos islands has increased rapidly, affecting wildlife in unknown ways. During 2005 and 2006, we sampled birds along a 4-km transect extending northeast of the city of Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz Island. This allowed us to collect data on the potential impacts of rapidly growing urban center on passerine bird diversity and abundance. We …

Liana Habitat Associations And Community Structure In A Bornean Lowland Tropical Forest, Saara J. Dewalt, Kalan Ickes, Reuben Nilus, Kyle E. Harms, David F.R.P. Burslem

Faculty Publications

Lianas (woody vines) contribute substantially to the diversity and structure of most tropical forests, yet little is known about the importance of habitat specialization in maintaining tropical liana diversity and the causes of variation among forests in liana abundance and species composition. We examined habitat associations, species diversity, species composition, and community structure of lianas at Sepilok Forest Reserve, Sabah, Malaysia in northeastern Borneo among three soil types that give rise to three distinct forest types of lowland tropical rain forest: alluvial, sandstone hill, and kerangas (heath) forest. Alluvial soils are more nutrient rich and have higher soil moisture than …

Where Do Clonal Coral Larvae Go? Adult Genotypic Diversity Conflicts With Reproductive Effort In The Brooding Coral Pocillopora Damicornis, David J. Ayre, Karen Miller

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Earlier studies of the coral Pocillopora damicornis provide a conflicting picture of its use of sexual and asexual reproduction for population maintenance. In Western Australia, colonies are asexually viviparous, and populations appear to be maintained by localised asexual recruitment but founded by genotypically diverse colonists. However, on Australia¹s Great Barrier Reef (GBR), as in many other regions, populations display little or no evidence of any asexual recruitment. We used allozyme electrophoresis to test for asexual input into local populations of P. damicornis at One Tree Island on the southern GBR. Contrary to expectation we found that all of 136 planulae …

The Role Of Colonization In Establishing Patterns Of Community Composition And Diversity In Shallow-Water Sedimentary Communities, Paul V. R. Snelgrove, J. Frederick Grassle, Judith P. Grassle, Rosemarie F. Petrecca, Karen I. Stocks

Journal of Marine Research

To determine whether pattern and diversity in benthic sedimentary communities are set primarily at colonization or by post-settlement biological interactions, we collected faunal cores and conducted reciprocal sediment transplant experiments at a sandy and a muddy site at 12 m depth, ~3 km apart off New Jersey. Multivariate analyses of cores collected at these sites in September 1994 indicated differences in the taxa determining local pattern, with the bivalve Spisula solidissima and the polychaete Polygordius sp. being dominant at the sandy site, and oligochaetes, several polychaete species and the bivalve Nucula annulata dominant at the muddy site. Individual cores from …