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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Salting Our Freshwater Lakes, Hilary A. Dugan, Sarah L. Bartlett, Samantha M. Burke, Jonathan P. Doubek, Flora Krivak-Tetley Apr 2017

Salting Our Freshwater Lakes, Hilary A. Dugan, Sarah L. Bartlett, Samantha M. Burke, Jonathan P. Doubek, Flora Krivak-Tetley

Dartmouth Scholarship

The highest densities of lakes on Earth are in north temperate ecosystems, where increasing urbanization and associated chloride runoff can salinize freshwaters and threaten lake water quality and the many ecosystem services lakes provide. However, the extent to which lake salinity may be changing at broad spatial scales remains unknown, leading us to first identify spatial patterns and then investigate the drivers of these patterns. Significant decadal trends in lake salinization were identified using a dataset of long-term chloride concentrations from 371 North American lakes. Landscape and climate metrics calculated for each site demonstrated that impervious land cover was a …


Road Ecology: Shifting Gears Toward Evolutionary Perspectives, Steven P. Brady, Jonathan L. Richardson Feb 2017

Road Ecology: Shifting Gears Toward Evolutionary Perspectives, Steven P. Brady, Jonathan L. Richardson

Dartmouth Scholarship

Recent advances in understanding the often rapid pace of evolution are reshaping our view of organisms and their capacity to cope with environmental change. Though evolutionary perspectives have gained traction in many fields of conservation, road ecology is not among them. This is surprising because roads are pervasive landscape features that generate intense natural selection. The biological outcomes from these selection pressures – whether adaptive or maladaptive – can have profound consequences for population persistence. We argue that studying evolutionary responses is critical to accurately understand the impacts of roads. Toward that end, we describe the basic tenets and relevance …


The Landscape Of Extreme Genomic Variation In The Highly Adaptable Atlantic Killifish, Noah M. Reid, Craig E. Jackson, Don Gilbert, Patrick Minx, Michael J. Montague, Thomas H. Hampton, Lily W. Helfrich, Benjamin L. King, Diane E. Nacci, Neel Aluru Feb 2017

The Landscape Of Extreme Genomic Variation In The Highly Adaptable Atlantic Killifish, Noah M. Reid, Craig E. Jackson, Don Gilbert, Patrick Minx, Michael J. Montague, Thomas H. Hampton, Lily W. Helfrich, Benjamin L. King, Diane E. Nacci, Neel Aluru

Dartmouth Scholarship

Understanding and predicting the fate of populations in changing environments require knowledge about the mechanisms that support phenotypic plasticity and the adaptive value and evolutionary fate of genetic variation within populations. Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) exhibit extensive phenotypic plasticity that supports large population sizes in highly fluctuating estuarine environments. Populations have also evolved diverse local adaptations. To yield insights into the genomic variation that supports their adaptability, we sequenced a reference genome and 48 additional whole genomes from a wild population. Evolution of genes associated with cell cycle regulation and apoptosis is accelerated along the killifish lineage, which …