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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Designing A Serious Game To Simulate Ecological Processes On A Post-Eruption Mount St. Helens Landscape, Parker Maynard
Designing A Serious Game To Simulate Ecological Processes On A Post-Eruption Mount St. Helens Landscape, Parker Maynard
Masters Theses
Developing strategies to successfully manage landscapes to meet ecological, economic, and social goals is an increasing concern in a world experiencing anthropogenic global changes. The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state provided a major learning opportunity in managing resource effectively after a major disturbance. This information is explored through Resilience: After The Eruption: a serious game developed as part of this thesis that synthesizes research about ecological recovery and resource management following the eruption of Mount St. Helens. The digital game allows players to take on the role of four different stakeholders performing landscape-based operations while …
Of Hosts And Habitats: The Ecological And Evolutionary Patterns Of The Amphibian Skin Microbiome, Benjamin Houston Holt
Of Hosts And Habitats: The Ecological And Evolutionary Patterns Of The Amphibian Skin Microbiome, Benjamin Houston Holt
Doctoral Dissertations
The skin microbiome of amphibian hosts can inhibit growth of pathogenic fungi, contribute to anti-predator compounds in newts, and is linked with sex-specific scents in frogs. However, despite growing evidence of symbiont importance to amphibians, how symbionts are acquired and maintained on hosts remains poorly resolved. Microbiomes exist on a dynamic spectrum from casual assemblages to intricate systems, and community members vary in fidelity and association to hosts. The establishment of these communities involves complex interactions between symbionts, host traits, and source communities. I seek to enhance our understanding by assessing the spatial-temporal patterns of the salamander skin microbiome relative …
Are Fungal Endophytes Of Fire Adapted Plants Also Fire Adapted?, Alexander C. Dowd
Are Fungal Endophytes Of Fire Adapted Plants Also Fire Adapted?, Alexander C. Dowd
Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects
No abstract provided.
The Effects Of Urbanization On The Avian Gut Microbiome, Mae Berlow
The Effects Of Urbanization On The Avian Gut Microbiome, Mae Berlow
Doctoral Dissertations
The gut microbiome influences and is influenced by the host, and can affect the host organism by contributing to health, development and immunity. Similarly, the host can influence this community; it’s makeup can vary with host species, locality, diet, social stressors, and environmental stressors. Some of these environmental stressors have arisen due to human-induced rapid environmental change, like urbanization. The physiology and behaviors of organisms that are able to persist in urban environments are often different from their non-urban congeners. Nutrition, development, and immunity—all of which are affected by the gut microbiome—are important factors that can determine survival in urban …
Plasticity And Biotic Interactions Mediate Plant Persistence In A Changing World, Alix Ann Pfennigwerth
Plasticity And Biotic Interactions Mediate Plant Persistence In A Changing World, Alix Ann Pfennigwerth
Masters Theses
Anthropogenic global change is occurring today at a faster rate and larger scale than ever before. Understanding how plants will respond to such large-scale disturbance is critical for biodiversity conservation, yet the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying these responses remain poorly understood. In this thesis, I investigated the mechanisms underlying plant response to two major drivers of global change, climate change and the widespread mortality of foundation species. First, I examined genetic and plastic plant trait responses to climatic variation using elevation gradients, which serve as space-for-time substitutions for climate change. Through field observations in three populations of the North …
Individual Variation In Plant Traits Drives Species Interactions, Ecosystem Functioning, And Responses To Global Change, Quentin Daniel Read
Individual Variation In Plant Traits Drives Species Interactions, Ecosystem Functioning, And Responses To Global Change, Quentin Daniel Read
Doctoral Dissertations
Ecologists have long sought to understand the processes that lead to the riotous diversity in communities of organisms that inhabit disparate climates and landscapes. Such a diversity of traits leads to a diversity of interactions among species in natural communities, which in turn generates a diversity of potential responses to ongoing global change. In this dissertation, I do three things: I explore the forces that structure plant communities and the ecosystem functions that they mediate, I describe patterns of variation among communities, species, and individual organisms across environmental contexts, and I disentangle the direct effects of global change from the …
Diversity And Activity Of Roseobacters And Roseophage, Charles Ryan Budinoff
Diversity And Activity Of Roseobacters And Roseophage, Charles Ryan Budinoff
Doctoral Dissertations
Bacteria of the Roseobacter lineage are dominant bacterioplankton in coastal systems and contribute significantly to secondary production in oceanic environments. Generalities of Roseobacter ecology, diversity, and distributions are known, but the intraspecific differences between species and their dynamics over short temporal periods is not well understood. Bacteriophage that infect Roseobacters (‘roseophage’) have the potential to shunt secondary production into the dissolved carbon pool and through the process of infection alter Roseobacter physiology. Despite their significance, little effort was made prior to the onset of this study to characterize roseophage. Using culture dependent and independent approaches, I describe the diversity and …
Plant Genotype, Not Nutrients, Shape Aphid Population Dynamics, Heather E. Tran, Lara Souza, Nathan J. Sanders, Aimee T. Classen
Plant Genotype, Not Nutrients, Shape Aphid Population Dynamics, Heather E. Tran, Lara Souza, Nathan J. Sanders, Aimee T. Classen
Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects
No abstract provided.