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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Traffic Noise And Sexual Selection: Studies Of Anthropogenic Impact On Bird Songs And Undergraduate Student Reasoning Of Evolutionary Mechanisms, Sarah Spier
School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Humans have transformed much of the natural landscape and are continuing to do so at an accelerated rate, compromising natural areas that serve as important habitat for many species. Roads impact much of the environment as they fragment habitat and introduce traffic noise into the acoustic environment, deferentially affecting wildlife in roadside habitat. I explored how traffic noise affects the detection of birds based on whether their vocalizations were masked by traffic noise. Masked species detection was not affected by an increase in traffic noise amplitude, while there was a negative effect of traffic noise amplitude on unmasked species detection, …
Plant Mitochondrial Genome Evolution And Structure Has Been Shaped By Double-Strand Break Repair And Recombination, Emily Wynn
School of Biological Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Plant mitochondrial genomes are large but contain a small number of genes. These genes have very low mutation rates, but genomes rearrange and expand at significant rates. We propose that much of the apparent complexity of plant mitochondrial genomes can be explained by the interactions of double-strand break repair, recombination, and selection. One possible explanation for the disparity between the low mutation rates of genes and the high divergence of non-genes is that synonymous mutations in genes are not truly neutral. In some species, rps14 has been duplicated in the nucleus, allowing the mitochondrial copy to become a pseudogene. By …