Life Sciences Commons^™

Living More Than Just Enough For The City: Persistence Of High-Quality Vegetation In Natural Areas In An Urban Setting, Rebecca W. Dolan, Jessica D. Stephens, Marcia E. Moore

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Urban environments pose special challenges to flora, including altered disturbance regimes, habitat fragmentation, and increased opportunity for invasion by non-native species. In addition, urban natural area represents most people’s contact with nature, given the majority of the world’s population currently live in cities. We used coefficients of conservatism (C-values), a system that ranks species based on perceived fidelity to remnant native plant communities that retain ecological integrity, to quantify habitat quality of 14 sites covering 850 ha within the city of Indianapolis, Indiana, in the Midwestern United States. All sites contained significant natural area and were inventoried via intensive complete …

African Elephants Change Gaits When Walking Downhill, Robert H.I. Dale, Robert Warren, Brock Ward, Eric Noble

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Abstract from the International Elephant and Rhino Conservation and Research Symposium, Rotterdam, NL, October 10-14, 2011.

Documenting Effects Of Urbanization On Flora Using Herbarium Records, Rebecca W. Dolan, Marcia E. Moore, Jessica Stephens

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

1. As human populations increasingly live in cities, urban floras and the ecosystem services they provide are under increasing threat. Understanding the effects of urbanization on plants can help to predict future changes and identify ways to preserve biological diversity. Relatively few studies document changes through time in the flora of a focal region and those that do primarily address European floras. They often rely on contemporary spatial gradient studies as surrogates for changes with time.

2. We compare historical species records (prior to 1940) with the current flora for Marion County, Indiana, USA, home to Indianapolis, the 13th largest city in …

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Positive Selection Shaped The Convergent Evolution Of Independently Expanded Kallikrein Subfamilies Expressed In Mouse And Rat Saliva Proteomes, Robert C. Karn, Christina M. Laukaitis

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

We performed proteomics studies of salivas from the genome mouse (C57BL/6 strain) and the genome rat (BN/SsNHsd/Mcwi strain). Our goal was to identify salivary proteins with one or more of three characteristics that may indicate that they have been involved in adaptation: 1) rapid expansion of their gene families; 2) footprints of positive selection; and/or 3) sex-limited expression. The results of our proteomics studies allow direct comparison of the proteins expressed and their levels between the sexes of the two rodent species. Twelve members of the Mus musculus species-specific kallikrein subfamily Klk1b showed sex-limited expression in the mouse saliva proteomes. …