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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Environmental And Adaptive Buffers That Mediate The Response Of Subalpine Ecosystems To Environmental Change, Lafe G. Conner
Environmental And Adaptive Buffers That Mediate The Response Of Subalpine Ecosystems To Environmental Change, Lafe G. Conner
Theses and Dissertations
This document reports the results of 4 studies of subalpine ecosystem ecology, describing ways that spatial heterogeneity in soils and plant communities mediate ecosystem responses to environmental change. Ecosystem responses to environmental change are also mediated by regional climate patterns and interannual variability in weather. In the first chapter we report the results of an experiment to test for the mediating effects of associational resistance in a forest community that experienced wide-spread beetle kill. We found that Engelmann spruce were more likely to survive a beetle outbreak when growing in low densities (host dilution) and not through other types of …
Emergent Non-Consumptive Predator Effects Alter Habitat Colonization By Dipteran Prey, Ethan G. Staats
Emergent Non-Consumptive Predator Effects Alter Habitat Colonization By Dipteran Prey, Ethan G. Staats
Theses and Dissertations
When ovipositing, prey organisms avoid habitat patches containing predator cues because predators consume, and negatively affect the fitness of their prey. Richness of predator species often enhances the strength of consumptive predator effects, but little is known about how multiple predators combined affect prey non-consumptively. We quantified dipteran colonization in aquatic mesocosms in response to varied predator richness. Multiple predator species combined reduced oviposition by Culex mosquitoes, chironomid midges, and the general colonizing dipteran community more than predicted by the effects of the independent predator species. Previous research which quantifies effects of multiple predators on prey as prey abundance, but …