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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
The Conservation Value Of Residential Landscapes For Native Bird Communities: Patterns, Processes, And Management Implications, Susannah Beth Lerman
The Conservation Value Of Residential Landscapes For Native Bird Communities: Patterns, Processes, And Management Implications, Susannah Beth Lerman
Open Access Dissertations
Urbanization, as it transforms natural biotic systems into human-dominated landscapes, is recognized as one of the greatest threats to biodiversity throughout the world. Furthermore, urban dwellers are becoming increasingly disconnected with the natural world. Here I investigate whether residential landscape designs that mimic the natural environment can provide habitat for native birds. First I uncover some of the patterns of bird distribution in residential yards by incorporating habitat features, urbanization measurements and socioeconomic factors with bird monitoring data into a multivariate analysis. The results indicate that native birds associate with neighborhoods with native plants and shrubs, neighborhoods closer to desert …
New Genomic Approaches Reveal The Process Of Genome Reduction In Prochlorococcus, Zhiyi Sun
New Genomic Approaches Reveal The Process Of Genome Reduction In Prochlorococcus, Zhiyi Sun
Open Access Dissertations
Small bacterial genomes are believed to be evolutionarily derived from larger genomes through massive loss of genes and are usually associated with symbiotic or pathogenic lifestyles. It is therefore intriguing that a similar phenomenon of genome reduction has been reported within a group of free-living phototrophic marine cyanobacteria Prochlorococcus. Here I have investigated the roles of natural selection and mutation rate in the process of Prochlorococcus genome size reduction. Using a data set of complete cyanobacterial genomes including 12 Prochlorococcus and a sister group of 5 marine Synechococcus, I first reconstructed the steps leading to Prochlorococcus genome reduction …
The Role Of Dawn Song In Tree Swallows And Its Place In The Diversity Of Oscine Song Learning, Benjamin Nichols Taft
The Role Of Dawn Song In Tree Swallows And Its Place In The Diversity Of Oscine Song Learning, Benjamin Nichols Taft
Open Access Dissertations
Aspects of the behavioral ecology of bird song learning are examined in three parts. First, an approach from image analysis is extended to allow rapid, quantitative description of animal sounds. In this approach, sounds are summarized as sets of time-frequency-amplitude landmarks. Second, the role of dawn song in tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor) breeding biology is examined. Song syllable sharing among tree swallows was found to be high among birds nesting at the same site, but sharing was lower between birds nesting at different sites. When birds nested at different sites, the distance between those sites was not related …