Life Sciences Commons^™

Oil Identification Of Harp Seal And Other Select Marine Mammals, Meghan Pinedo, Deborah A. Duffield, Dalin N. D’Alessandro, Erin R. Price, Edgard O. Espinoza

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Because of the rich omega-3 fatty acids content, harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus) oil is a popular supplement that is packaged as pills in Canada and sold for medicinal purposes, although this practice is banned in the United States. Due to US regulations, it is important to be able to distinguish between fish oil and seal oil, but the taxonomic determination of oils provenance has been a difficult problem to solve. In this study, Direct Analysis in Real Time time-of-flight mass spectrometry (DART TOFMS) was used to analyze the chemotypes of blubber samples collected from seven species of …

Continuous Mowing Differentially Affects Floral Defenses In The Noxious And Invasive Weed Solanum Elaeagnifolium In Its Native Range, Alejandro Vasquez, Alexa Alaniz, Robert K. Dearth, Rupesh R. Kariyat

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

In weeds, disturbance has been found to affect life history traits and mediate trophic interactions. In urban landscapes, mowing is an important disturbance, and we previously showed that continuous mowing leads to enhanced fitness and defense traits in Solanum elaeagnifolium, Silverleaf Nightshade (SLN). However, most studies have been focused on foliar defenses, ignoring floral defenses. In this study we examined whether continuous mowing affected floral defenses in SLN using mowed and unmowed populations in South Texas, their native range. We found flowers of mowed SLN plants larger but lighter than unmowed plants. Additionally, flowers on plants that were mowed …

Effects Of Wind Turbine Noise On Songbird Behavior During Nonbreeding Season, Yael Lehnardt, Jesse R. Barber, Oded Berger-Tal

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Anthropogenic noise is one of the fastest growing, globally widespread pollutants, affecting countless species worldwide. Despite accumulating evidence of the negative impacts of wind turbines on wildlife, little is known about how the noise they generate affects ecological systems. Songbirds may be susceptible to noise pollution due to their reliance on vocal communication and thus, in this field study, we examined how songbirds are affected by wind turbine noise. We broadcasted noise produced by one wind turbine in a migratory stopover site during the nonbreeding season. Throughout the study, we repeatedly monitored the acoustic environment and songbird community before, during, …

Rhizobia-Legume Symbiosis Mediates Direct And Indirect Interactions Between Plants, Herbivores And Their Parasitoids, Carlos Bustos-Segura, Adrienne L. Godschalx, Lucas Malacari, Sergio Rasmann, Fanny Deiss, Daniel Ballhorn, Betty Benrey

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Microorganisms associated with plant roots significantly impact the quality and quantity of plant defences. However, the bottom-up effects of soil microbes on the aboveground multitrophic interactions remain largely under studied. To address this gap, we investigated the chemically- mediated effects of nitrogen-fixing rhizobia on legume-herbivore-parasitoid multitrophic interactions. To address this, we initially examined the cascading effects of the rhizobia bean association on herbivore caterpillars, their parasitoids, and subsequently investigated how rhizobia influence on plant volatiles and extrafloral nectar. Our goal was to understand how these plant- mediated effects can affect parasitoids. Lima bean plants (Phaseoulus lunatus) inoculated with rhizobia exhibited …

Proteomic Dataset For Decellularization Of Porcine Auricular Cartilage, Roxanne N. Stone, Xinzhu Pu, Julia Thom Oxford

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objectives Osteoarthritis (OA) is a major concern in the United States and worldwide. Development and validation of robust decellularization techniques is critical in generating suitable bioscaffolds for future OA treatment options.

Data descriptions In the present study, proteins from porcine auricular cartilage before and after decellularization were extracted, digested, and identified using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The data represents protein profiles of both non-decellularized and decellularized porcine auricular cartilage. This data is intended to be useful to scientists who are interesting in generating biomaterials for potential relevant clinical applications using decellularized cartilage tissue.

Ubiquitous Filter Feeders Shape Open Ocean Microbial Community Structure And Function, Anne W. Thompson, Györgyi Nyerges, Kylee M. Brevick, Kelly Sutherland

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The mechanism of mortality plays a large role in how microorganisms in the open ocean contribute to global energy and nutrient cycling. Salps are ubiquitous pelagic tunicates that are a well-known mortality source for large phototrophic microorganisms in coastal and high-latitude systems, but their impact on the immense populations of smaller prokaryotes in the tropical and subtropical open ocean gyres is not well quantified. We used robustly quantitative techniques to measure salp clearance and enrichment of specific microbial functional groups in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, one of the largest ecosystems on Earth. We discovered that salps are a previously …

Overlapping Extractive Land Use Rights Increases Deforestation And Forest Degradation In Managed Natural Production Forests, Bingcai Liu, Anand Roopsind, Brent Sohngen

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Guyana manages an estimated 5.3 million hectares of old-growth tropical forests, 29% of its total forest area, for timber extraction. Individuals and companies can apply for time-limited leases that allocate access, management, and extraction rights for timber through a concession system. In many tropical regions, including Guyana, a lack of integrated land use planning often leads to overlapping extractive and forest use rights for logging and mining. Overlapping land rights in turn create uncertainty and limit investments toward sustainable forest management, affecting deforestation and forest degradation rates. In this study, we use matched fixed-effect and difference-in-differences panel data models to …

The Role Of Nad+ And Nad+-Boosting Therapies In Inflammatory Response By Il-13, Anton D. Pugel, Alyssa M. Schoenfeld, Sara Z. Alsaifi, Jocelyn R. Holmes, Brad E. Morrison

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The essential role of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide⁺ (NAD⁺) in redox reactions during oxidative respiration is well known, yet the coenzyme and regulator functions of NAD⁺ in diverse and important processes are still being discovered. Maintaining NAD⁺ levels through diet is essential for health. In fact, the United States requires supplementation of the NAD⁺ precursor niacin into the food chain for these reasons. A large body of research also indicates that elevating NAD⁺ levels is beneficial for numerous conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular health, inflammatory response, and longevity. Consequently, strategies have been created to elevate …

Applied Soft Classes And Fuzzy Confusion In A Patchwork Semi-Arid Ecosystem: Stitching Together Classification Techniques To Preserve Ecologically-Meaningful Information, Josh Enterkine, T. Trevor Caughlin, Hamid Dashti, Nancy F. Glenn

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Dryland ecosystems have complex vegetation communities, including subtle transitions between communities and heterogeneous coverage of key functional groups. This complexity challenges the capacity of remote sensing to represent land cover in a meaningful way. Many remote sensing methods to map vegetation in drylands simplify fractional cover into a small number of functional groups that may overlook key ecological communities. Here, we investigate a remote sensing process that further advances our understanding of the link between remote sensing and ecologic community types in drylands. We propose a method using k-means clustering to establish soft classes of vegetation cover communities from detailed …

A Genus In The Bacterial Phylum Aquificota Appears To Be Endemic To Aotearoa-New Zealand, Jean F. Power, Carlo R. Carere, Holly E. Welford, Daniel T. Hudson, Kevin C. Lee, John W. Moreau, Anna-Louise Reysenbach, Thijs J.G. Ettema, Multiple Additional Authors

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Allopatric speciation has been difficult to examine among microorganisms, with prior reports of endemism restricted to sub-genus level taxa. Previous microbial community analysis via 16S rRNA gene sequencing of 925 geothermal springs from the Taupō Volcanic Zone (TVZ), Aotearoa-New Zealand, revealed widespread distribution and abundance of a single bacterial genus across 686 of these ecosystems (pH 1.2-9.6 and 17.4-99.8 °C). Here, we present evidence to suggest that this genus, Venenivibrio (phylum Aquificota), is endemic to Aotearoa-New Zealand. A specific environmental niche that increases habitat isolation was identified, with maximal read abundance of Venenivibrio occurring at pH 4-6, 50-70 °C, and …

Genomic Surveillance Of Sars-Cov-2 Sequence Variants At Universities In Southwest Idaho, Jennifer R. Chase, Laura Bond, Daniel J. Vail, Milan Sengthep, Adriana Rodriguez, Joe Christianson, Stephanie F. Hudon, Julia Thom Oxford

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on major metropolitan areas is broadly reported and readily available, regions with lower populations and more remote areas in the United States are understudied. The objective of this study is to determine the progression of SARS-CoV-2 sequence variants in a frontier and remote intermountain west state among university-associated communities. This study was conducted at two intermountain west universities from 2020 to 2022. Positive SARS-CoV-2 samples were confirmed by quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and variants were identified by the next-generation sequencing of viral genomes. Positive results were obtained for 5355 samples, representing …

Low Spatial Habitat Overlap Of Herbivores In The High Arctic Tundra, Virve Ravolainen, Ingrid M. G. Paulsen, Isabell Eischeid, Jennifer Sorensen Forbey, Eva Fuglei, Tomáš Hájek, Brage B. Hansen, Leif Egil Loe, Petr Macek, Jesper Madsen, Eeva M. Soininen, James D. M. Speed, Audun Stien, Hans Tømmervik, Åshild Ønvik Pedersen

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Herbivores play a crucial role in shaping tundra ecosystems through their effects on vegetation, nutrient cycling, and soil abiotic factors. Understanding their habitat use, co-occurrence, and overlap is therefore essential for informing ecosystem-based management and conservation. In the High Arctic, only a marginal proportion of the land area is vegetated, and climate change is impacting herbivore population sizes and their habitats. In this study, we assessed the spatial habitat overlap of a vertebrate herbivore community based on: 1) regional predictive summer habitat suitability models for the resident Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus), resident Svalbard rock ptarmigan (Lagopus …

9s1r Nullomer Peptide Induces Mitochondrial Pathology, Metabolic Suppression, And Enhanced Immune Cell Infiltration, In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Mouse Model, Nilufar Ali, Cody Wolf, Swarna Kanchan, Shivakumar R. Veerabhadraiah, Laura Bond, Matthew W. Turner, Cheryl L. Jorcyk, Greg Hampikian

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nullomers are the shortest strings of absent amino acid (aa) sequences in a species or group of species. Primes are those nullomers that have not been detected in the genome of any species. 9S1R is a 5-aa peptide prime sequence attached to 5-arginine aa, used to treat triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) in an in vivo mouse model. This unique peptide, administered with a trehalose carrier (9S1R-NulloPT), offers enhanced solubility and exhibits distinct anti-cancer effects against TNBC. In our study, we investigated the effect of 9S1R-NulloPT on tumor growth, metabolism, metastatic burden, tumor immune-microenvironment (TME), and transcriptome of aggressive mouse …

Leveraging High Resolution Classifications And Random Forests For Hindcasting Decades Of Mesic Ecosystem Dynamics In The Landsat Time Series, N. E. Kolarik, N. Shrestha, T. Caughlin, J. S. Brandt

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Mesic ecosystems are fundamental to conservation efforts in semi-arid systems, but are threatened by climate change and development. Newer earth observation datasets, including Sentinel-1 and −2, provide opportunities to monitor mesic ecosystems at meaningful spatial scales, but are insufficient for measuring decadal-scale changes. Conversely, the Landsat time series has decades of data, but images are spatially coarse relative to many of the mesic ecosystem areas that sustain dryland systems, resulting in classifications with mixed pixels inadequate for effective monitoring. We developed a workflow that uses 10-m classifications produced from fusion of the Sentinel-1 and −2 time series (2017–2020) to estimate …

Preparing Teaching Assistants To Facilitate Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (Cures) In The Biological Sciences: A Call To Action, Erin Shortlidge, Amie M. Kern, Emma Goodwin, Jeffrey T. Olimpo

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) offer an expanding avenue to engage students in real-world scientific practices. Increasingly, CUREs are instructed by graduate teaching assistants (TAs), yet TAs may be underprepared to facilitate and face unique barriers when teaching CUREs. Consequently, unless TAs are provided professional development (PD) and resources to teach CUREs effectively, they and their students may not reap the assumed benefits of CURE instruction. Here, we describe three perspectives – that of the CURE TA, the CURE designer/facilitator, and the CURE student – that are collectively intended to inform the development of tentative components of CURE TA PD. …

Genetic And Environmental Drivers Of Migratory Behavior In Western Burrowing Owls And Implications For Conservation And Management, Kelly Barr, Christen M. Bossu, Rachel A. Bay, Eric C. Anderson, Jim Belthoff, Lynne A. Trulio, Debra Chromczak, Colleen L. Wisinski, Thomas B. Smith, Kristen C. Ruegg

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Migration is driven by a combination of environmental and genetic factors, but many questions remain about those drivers. Potential interactions between genetic and environmental variants associated with different migratory phenotypes are rarely the focus of study. We pair low coverage whole genome resequencing with a de novo genome assembly to examine population structure, inbreeding, and the environmental factors associated with genetic differentiation between migratory and resident breeding phenotypes in a species of conservation concern, the western burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia hypugaea). Our analyses reveal a dichotomy in gene flow depending on whether the population is resident or migratory, …

Doxorubicin-Induced Modulation Of Tgf-Β Signaling Cascade In Mouse Fibroblasts: Insights Into Cardiotoxicity Mechanisms, Conner Patricelli, Parker Lehmann, Julia Thom Oxford, Xinzhu Pu

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Doxorubicin (DOX)-induced cardiotoxicity has been widely observed, yet the specific impact on cardiac fibroblasts is not fully understood. Additionally, the modulation of the transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) signaling pathway by DOX remains to be fully elucidated. This study investigated DOX’s ability to modulate the expression of genes and proteins involved in the TGF-β signaling cascade in mouse fibroblasts from two sources by assessing the impact of DOX treatment on TGF-β inducible expression of pivotal genes and proteins within fibroblasts. Mouse embryonic fibroblasts (NIH3T3) and mouse primary cardiac fibroblasts (CFs) were treated with DOX in the presence of TGF-β1 to …

Big Boned: How Fat Storage And Other Adaptations Influenced Large Theropod Foraging Ecology, Cameron Pahl, Luis A. Ruedas

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Dinosaur foraging ecology has been the subject of scientific interest for decades, yet much of what we understand about it remains hypothetical. We wrote an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate meat energy sources present in dinosaur environments, including carcasses of giant sauropods, along with living, huntable prey. Theropod dinosaurs modeled in this environment (specifically allosauroids, and more particularly, Allosaurus Marsh, 1877) were instantiated with heritable traits favorable to either hunting success or scavenging success. If hunter phenotypes were more reproductively successful, their traits were propagated into the population through their offspring, resulting in predator specialists. If selective pressure favored scavenger …

Germ Cell Recovery, Cryopreservation And Transplantation In The California White Sturgeon, Acipenser Transmontanus, Amie L. Romney, Danielle M. Myers, Fatima R. Martin, Tawney N. Scanlan, Stuart A. Meyers

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus) is the largest freshwater fish in North America. Because of the unique life history characteristics of sturgeon, including longevity, late maturation and long spawning intervals, their aquaculture can be a significant investment of resources. As a result of habitat loss and overharvesting, natural populations of white sturgeon are threatened and there is a growing effort to improve conservation aquaculture programs. Germ cell transplantation is an innovative technology previously demonstrated in a variety of fish species to be able to produce a surrogate broodstock. The technique relies upon optimal donor germ cell recovery and transplantation into …

Foxo1 Promotes The Expression Of Canonical Wnt Target Genes In Examined Basal-Like Breast And Glioblastoma Multiforme Cancer Cells, Shania Pintor, Alma Lopez, David Flores, Brianda Lozoya, Bipul Soti, Rishi Pokhrel, Joaquin Negrete, Michael W. Persans, Robert Gilkerson, Bonnie Gunn, Megan Keniry

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Basal-like breast cancer (BBC) and glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) are aggressive cancers associated with poor prognosis. BBC and GBM have stem cell-like gene expression signatures, which are in part driven by forkhead box O (FOXO) transcription factors. To gain further insight into the impact of FOXO1 in BBC, we treated BT549 cells with AS1842856 and performed RNA sequencing. AS1842856 binds to unphosphorylated FOXO1 and inhibits its ability to directly bind to DNA. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis indicated that a set of WNT pathway target genes, including lymphoid enhancer-binding factor 1 (LEF1) and transcription factor 7 (TCF7), were …

Background Acoustics In Terrestrial Ecology, Clinton D. Francis, Jennifer N. Phillips, Jesse R. Barber

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The way in which terrestrial organisms use the acoustic realm is fundamentally important and shapes behavior, populations, and communities, but how background acoustics, or noise, influence the patterns and processes in ecology is still relatively understudied. In this review, we summarize how background acoustics have traditionally been studied from the signaling perspective, discuss what is known from a receiver's perspective, and explore what is known about population- and community-level responses to noise. We suggest that there are major gaps linking animal physiology and behavior in noise to fitness; that there is a limited understanding of variation in hearing within and …

Biocrusts Indicators Of Livestock Grazing Effects On Soil Stability In Sagebrush Steppe: A Case Study From A Long-Term Experiment In The Northern Great Basin, Stella M. Copeland, Lea A. Condon, Roger Rosentreter, Jesse E. D. Miller, Maya Kahn-Abrams

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Biocrusts are sensitive to changes in livestock grazing intensity in arid rangelands and may be useful indicators of ecosystem functions, particularly soil properties like soil stability, which may suggest the potential for soil erosion. We compared biocrust community composition and surface soil stability in a big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) steppe rangeland in the northwestern Great Basin in several paired sites, with or without long-term cattle grazing exclusion, and similar soils (mostly sandy loams), climate, and vegetation composition. We found that livestock grazing was associated with both lower surface soil stability and cover of several biocrust morphogroups, especially lichens, compared with …

Drivers Of Plankton Community Structure In Intermittent And Continuous Coastal Upwelling Systems–From Microbes And Microscale In-Situ Imaging To Large Scale Patterns, Moritz Schmid, Su Sponaugle, Anne W. Thompson, Kelly T. Sutherland, Robert Cowen

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Eastern Boundary Systems support major fisheries whose early life stages depend on upwelling production. Upwelling can be highly variable at the regional scale, with substantial repercussions for new productivity and microbial loop activity. Studies that integrate the classic trophic web based on new production with the microbial loop are rare due to the range in body forms and sizes of the taxa. Underwater imaging can overcome this limitation, and with machine learning, enables fine resolution studies spanning large spatial scales. We used the In-situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging System (ISIIS) to investigate the drivers of plankton community structure in the northern California …

Sex And Stress Modulate Pupal Defense Response In Tobacco Hornworm, Sukhman Singh, Sakshi Watts, Ishveen Kaur, Isabella Rodriguez, Jessica Ayala, Dariela Rodriguez, Elian Martin, Rupesh R. Kariyat

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

In insects, larval and adult defenses against predators have been well studied. However, pupal (also known as resting stage) defenses have been overlooked and not examined thoroughly. Although some pupa possess antipredator strategies such as hairs, spines, cryptic coloration, and exudation of chemicals, few studies have tested these responses and the factors affecting them. Here, we investigated the behavioral responses in tobacco hornworm Manduca sexta that pupates in soil by introducing an external stimulus using vibrations from an electric toothbrush to mimic predation. We observed that M. sexta made violent wriggling (twitching), followed by pulsating movements in response to the …

Diverse And Variable Community Structure Of Picophytoplankton Across The Laurentian Great Lakes, John Gale, Carey P. Sweeney, Sarah Paver, Maureen L. Coleman, Anne W. Thompson

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Laurentian Great Lakes provide economic support to millions of people, drive biogeochemical cycling, and are an important natural laboratory for characterizing the fundamental components of aquatic ecosystems. Small phytoplankton are important contributors to the food web in much of the Laurentian Great Lakes. Here, for the first time, we reveal and quantify eight phenotypically distinct picophytoplankton populations across the Lakes using a multilaser flow cytometry approach, which distinguishes cells based on their pigment phenotype. The distributions and diversity of picophytoplankton flow populations varied across lakes and depths, with Lake Erie standing out with the highest diversity. By sequencing sorted …

Computational Analysis Of Plasma Lipidomics From Mice Fed Standard Chow And Ketogenic Diet, Amy L. Seufert, James W. Hickman, Jaewoo Choi, Brooke A. Napier

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Dietary saturated fatty acids (SFAs) are upregulated in the blood circulation following digestion. A variety of circulating lipid species have been implicated in metabolic and inflammatory diseases; however, due to the extreme variability in serum or plasma lipid concentrations found in human studies, established reference ranges are still lacking, in addition to lipid specificity and diagnostic biomarkers. Mass spectrometry is widely used for identification of lipid species in the plasma, and there are many differences in sample extraction methods within the literature. We used ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) coupled to a high-resolution hybrid triple quadrupole-time-of-flight (QToF) mass spectrometry (MS) …

Dna Barcoding Of Springsnails (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Caenogastropoda) Endemic To The Trans-Pecos Region Of Texas (Usa), Kathryn E. Perez, Vanessa Saenz, Natalia Salazar-Lozano, Benjamin F. Schwartz, Benjamin T. Hutchins

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

In desert environments, unique communities depend on groundwater from springs, including a diverse radiation of small (<5 >mm) snails found in the desert across the southwestern United States. Nearly all springsnail species are considered critically imperiled with their existence depending on maintenance of spring-flows in regions of declining water availability. Extant, endemic springsnails in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas include one species of Pseudotryonia Hershler, 2001, five nominal Tryonia W. Stimpson, 1865 (Cochliopidae) and seven Pyrgulopsis Call & Pilsbry, 1886 (Hydrobiidae). Four of these are classified as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act. Surveys for springsnails were conducted at …

Illegal Shooting Is Now A Leading Cause Of Death Of Birds Along Power Lines In The Western Usa, Eve C. Thomason, Natalie J. S. Turley, James R. Belthoff, Tara J. Conkling, Todd E. Katzner

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Human actions, both legal and illegal, affect wildlife in many ways. Inaccurate diagnosis of cause of death undermines law enforcement, management, threat assessment, and mitigation. We found 410 dead birds collected along 196 km of power lines in four western USA states during 2019–2022. We necropsied these carcasses to test conventional wisdom suggesting that electrocution is the leading cause of death of birds at electrical infrastructure. Of 175 birds with a known cause of death, 66% died from gunshot. Both raptors and corvids were more likely to die from gunshot than from other causes, along both transmission and distribution lines. …

Cullin 3–Mediated Regulation Of Intracellular Iron Homeostasis Promotes Thymic Invariant Nkt Cell Maturation, Emily L. Yarosz, Ajay Kumar, Jeffrey Singer, Cheong-Hee Chang

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The E3 ubiquitin ligase cullin 3 (Cul3) is critical for invariant NKT (iNKT) cell development, as iNKT cells lacking Cul3 accumulate in the immature developmental stages. However, the mechanisms by which Cul3 mediates iNKT cell development remain unknown. In this study, we investigated the role of Cul3 in both immature and mature thymic iNKT cells using a mouse model with a T cell–specific deletion of Cul3. We found that mature iNKT cells lacking Cul3 proliferated and died more than wild-type cells did. These cells also displayed increased glucose metabolism and autophagy. Interestingly, we found that tight regulation of iron homeostasis …

A Genotype × Environment Experiment Reveals Contrasting Response Strategies To Drought Between Populations Of A Keystone Species (Artemisia Tridentata; Asteraceae), Anthony E. Melton, Kara Moran, Peggy Martinez, Paige Ellestad, Erin Milliken, Walker Morales, Andrew W. Child, Bryce A. Richardson, Marcelo Serpe, Stephen J. Novak, Sven Buerki

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Western North America has been experiencing persistent drought exacerbated by climate change for over two decades. This extreme climate event is a clear threat to native plant communities. Artemisia tridentata is a keystone shrub species in western North America and is threatened by climate change, urbanization, and wildfire. A drought Genotype × Environment (G × E) experiment was conducted to assess phenotypic plasticity and differential gene expression in A. tridentata. The G × E experiment was performed on diploid A. tridentata seedlings from two populations (one from Idaho, USA and one from Utah, USA), which experience differing levels of …