Life Sciences Commons^™

Vignette 11: Ecological Consequences Of Built Shorelines In The Salish Sea, Stuart H. Munsch

Institute Publications

The world's population is disproportionately located near water. As a result, many nearshore ecosystems are highly modified. This is the case in the Salish Sea where many species rely on shoreline habitats. One of the major modifications to the Salish Sea's shoreline is armoring. Armored shorelines sever the connection between land and sea, preventing mutual exchange of nutrients and energy, influencing fish composition, and affecting photosynthetic species through overwater structures. By appreciating habitat impacts and how to mitigate them, we may steer toward a future that enables people and nearshore ecosystems to coexist. Restoring shorelines by removing armoring can recover …

Patterns Of Genetic Divergence Across Geographically Variable Populations Of Xanthisma Gracile (Asteraceae), Lavanya Challagundla, Lisa E. Wallace

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Premise of research. Numerous biotic and abiotic factors can contribute to local selection and lead to geographic structure and genetic divergence between populations. The southwestern United States contains many distinctive plant communities, ranging from woodlands to desert scrub, that are shaped by species adapting to local variation in elevation, precipitation, seasonality, and soils. Given this variation, species occurring across diverse habitats are expected to harbor high genetic diversity and exhibit significant genetic differences associated with environmental variation.

Methodology. Here, we studied the genetic divergence of populations of Xanthisma gracile (Asteraceae) across Arizona using amplified fragment length polymorphisms and evaluated associations …