Life Sciences Commons^™

The Role Of Environmental Filtering In Structuring Appalachian Tree Communities: Topographic Influences On Functional Diversity Are Mediated Through Soil Characteristics, Julia I. Chapman, Ryan W. Mcewan

Biology Faculty Publications

Identifying the drivers of community assembly has long been a central goal in ecology, and the development of functional diversity indices has provided a new way of detecting the influence of environmental gradients on biotic communities. For an old-growth Appalachian forest, we used path analysis to understand how patterns of tree functional diversity relate to topography and soil gradients and to determine whether topographic effects are mediated through soil chemistry. All of our path models supported the idea of environmental filtering: stressful areas (high elevation, low soil moisture, low soil nutrients) were occupied by communities of low functional diversity, which …

Tropical Cyclones Disrupt The Relationship Between Tree Height And Species Diversity: Comment, Teng-Chiu Lin, Lixin Wang, Chengyang Zheng, Ryan W. Mcewan, Chung-Te Chang, Jyh-Min Chiang, Chung-Hao Chi

Biology Faculty Publications

In a recent report on the patterns of tree species richness in eastern and western North America, Marks et al. (2016) claimed to have identified an operational indicator of environmental harshness (maximum tree height) and concluded that environmental stressors that limit tree height also act as ecological filters on species richness. Marks et al. (2017) attributed the positive association between species richness and maximum tree height to both the direct effects of environmental harshness on species richness and the indirect effects of environmental harshness on species richness as mediated by maximum tree height.

This finding overlooked the fact that many …

Confocal Microscopy: A Powerful Tool For Biological Research, Amit Singh, K. P. Gopinathan

Biology Faculty Publications

Conventional light microscopy allows the observation of living as well as fixed cells and tissues to generate two-dimensional images. The out-of-focus information often obscures the ultrastructural details, especially in thick specimens with overlapping structures. The earliest available light microscopy visualized the objects in hydrated state in two-dimensions during their temporal development. The emergence of electron microscopy (EM) provided superb resolution of ultrastructural details, but it was applicable only for objects in the dehydrated state and thereby potentially introducing handling artifacts. The usefulness of optical methods, however, has been limited by the poor depth discrimination. Often, the fluorescence and reflectance images …

A Comparative 2-Dimensional Gel Protein Database Of The Intact And Regenerating Newt Limbs, Panagiotis A. Tsonis

Biology Faculty Publications

In this paper we describe a two-dimensional gel database of the regenerating newt limb. Protein synthesis was compared in the intact limb, in the 1-week regenerating limb, representing the dedifferentiation stage, and in the 2-week regenerating limb, representing the formation of the blastema. This comparative database provided data on differential expression of about 800 proteins during the process of limb regeneration. In addition, a map has been generated for these proteins for future guidance in characterizing further new, unknown proteins. The overall expression patterns of the proteins indicated that the dedifferentiation stage was marked by down-regulation of most proteins, while …