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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Why Agriculture Productivity Falls: The Political Economy Of Agrarian Transition In Developing Countries, Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir Jun 2023

Why Agriculture Productivity Falls: The Political Economy Of Agrarian Transition In Developing Countries, Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir

Purdue University Press Books

Why Agriculture Productivity Falls: The Political Economy of Agrarian Transition in Developing Countries offers a new explanation for the decline in agricultural productivity in developing countries. Transcending the conventional approaches to understanding productivity using agricultural inputs and factors of production, this work brings in the role of formal and informal institutions that govern transactions, property rights, and accumulation. This more robust methodology leads to a comprehensive, well-balanced lens to perceive agrarian transition in developing countries. It argues that the existing process of accumulation has resulted in nonsustainable agriculture because of market failures—the result of asymmetries of power, diseconomies of scale, …


We Travel Together: Examining The Drivers And Functions Of Animal Movement In Biotic Seed Dispersal, Binod Borah May 2023

We Travel Together: Examining The Drivers And Functions Of Animal Movement In Biotic Seed Dispersal, Binod Borah

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Plants and frugivorous animals exist in mutually beneficial relations, as these animals feed on fruits, ingest the seeds, and carry them away from the parent trees. Such dispersion of seeds over space helps them colonize new habitats, escape high mortality rates near their parent trees, and avoid competition with conspecifics. Therefore, seed dispersing animal movement can be critical for the persistence of plant populations. Yet what drives such seed disperser movement is often less understood and how it affects seed dispersal is little explored. In my dissertation, I investigate multiple drivers of seed disperser movement, link movement to potential seed …


Chromosome-Length Assembly Of The Baikal Seal (Pusa Sibirica) Genome Reveals A Historically Large Population Prior To Isolation In Lake Baikal, Aliya Yakupova, Andrey Tomarovsky, Azamat Totikov, Violetta R. Beklemisheva, Maria Logacheva, Polina Perelman, Aleksey Komissarov, Pavel Dobrynin, Ksenia Krasheninnikova, Gaik Tamazian, Natalya A. Serdyukova, Michael Rayko, Tatiana Bulyonkova, Nikolay Cherkasov, Vladimir Pylev, Vladimir Peterfeld, Aleksey Penin, Elena Balanovska, Alla L. Lapidus, Dna Zoo Consortium, Stephen James O'Brien, Alexander S. Graphodatsky, Klaus-Peter Koepfli, Sergey Kliver Feb 2023

Chromosome-Length Assembly Of The Baikal Seal (Pusa Sibirica) Genome Reveals A Historically Large Population Prior To Isolation In Lake Baikal, Aliya Yakupova, Andrey Tomarovsky, Azamat Totikov, Violetta R. Beklemisheva, Maria Logacheva, Polina Perelman, Aleksey Komissarov, Pavel Dobrynin, Ksenia Krasheninnikova, Gaik Tamazian, Natalya A. Serdyukova, Michael Rayko, Tatiana Bulyonkova, Nikolay Cherkasov, Vladimir Pylev, Vladimir Peterfeld, Aleksey Penin, Elena Balanovska, Alla L. Lapidus, Dna Zoo Consortium, Stephen James O'Brien, Alexander S. Graphodatsky, Klaus-Peter Koepfli, Sergey Kliver

Biology Faculty Articles

Pusa sibirica, the Baikal seal, is the only extant, exclusively freshwater, pinniped species. The pending issue is, how and when they reached their current habitat—the rift lake Baikal, more than three thousand kilometers away from the Arctic Ocean. To explore the demographic history and genetic diversity of this species, we generated a de novo chromosome-length assembly, and compared it with three closely related marine pinniped species. Multiple whole genome alignment of the four species compared with their karyotypes showed high conservation of chromosomal features, except for three large inversions on chromosome VI. We found the mean heterozygosity of the studied …


Burmese Pythons In Florida: A Synthesis Of Biology, Impacts, And Management Tools, Jacquelyn C. Guzy, Bryan G. Falk, Brian J. Smith, Johnd David Willson, Robert N. Reed, Nicholas G. Aumen, Michael L. Avery, Ian A. Bartoszek, Earl Campbell, Michael S. Cherkiss, Natalie M. Claunch, Andrea F. Currylow, Tylan Dean, Jeremy Dixon, Richard Engeman, Sarah Funck, Rebekah Gibble, Kodiak C. Hengstebeck, John S. Humphrey, Margaret E. Hunter, Jillian M. Josimovich, Jennifer Ketterlin, Michael Kirkland, Frank J. Mazzotti, Robert Mccleery, Melissa A. Miller, Matthew Mccollister, M. Rockwell Parker, Shannon E. Pittman, Michael Rochford, Christina Romagosa, Art Roybal, Ray W. Snow, Mckayla M. Spencer, J. Hardin Waddle, Any A. Yackel Adams, Kristen M. Hart Jan 2023

Burmese Pythons In Florida: A Synthesis Of Biology, Impacts, And Management Tools, Jacquelyn C. Guzy, Bryan G. Falk, Brian J. Smith, Johnd David Willson, Robert N. Reed, Nicholas G. Aumen, Michael L. Avery, Ian A. Bartoszek, Earl Campbell, Michael S. Cherkiss, Natalie M. Claunch, Andrea F. Currylow, Tylan Dean, Jeremy Dixon, Richard Engeman, Sarah Funck, Rebekah Gibble, Kodiak C. Hengstebeck, John S. Humphrey, Margaret E. Hunter, Jillian M. Josimovich, Jennifer Ketterlin, Michael Kirkland, Frank J. Mazzotti, Robert Mccleery, Melissa A. Miller, Matthew Mccollister, M. Rockwell Parker, Shannon E. Pittman, Michael Rochford, Christina Romagosa, Art Roybal, Ray W. Snow, Mckayla M. Spencer, J. Hardin Waddle, Any A. Yackel Adams, Kristen M. Hart

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Burmese pythons (Python molurus bivittatus) are native to southeastern Asia, however, there is an established invasive population inhabiting much of southern Florida throughout the Greater Everglades Ecosystem. Pythons have severely impacted native species and ecosystems in Florida and represent one of the most intractable invasive-species management issues across the globe. The difficulty stems from a unique combination of inaccessible habitat and the cryptic and resilient nature of pythons that thrive in the subtropical environment of southern Florida, rendering them extremely challenging to detect. Here we provide a comprehensive review and synthesis of the science relevant to managing invasive …


Dormant Propagules In Demographic Studies: A Recurrent Bias And Potential Solutions, Federico Borghesi Jan 2023

Dormant Propagules In Demographic Studies: A Recurrent Bias And Potential Solutions, Federico Borghesi

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

In the face of unprecedented anthropogenic change, we increasingly turn to emergent technologies and extensive data sets for solutions that complement much needed systemic changes in our societies. These technological solutions, however, must be approached with care. We must recognize and address biases in the way data has been accumulated. In demographic studies, dormant life stages, such as seed banks, and other cryptic factors have often been neglected. The potential consequences of these omissions have been extensively described in the literature. In the first chapter, I analyze patterns of seed bank omissions in demographic models, finding unjustified omissions are widespread …


Can Demographic Histories Explain Long-Term Isolation And Recent Pulses Of Asymmetric Gene Flow Between Highly Divergent Grey Fox Lineages?, Sophie Preckler-Quisquater, Elizabeth M. Kierepka, Dawn M. Reding, Antoinette J. Piaggio, Benjamin N. Sacks Jan 2023

Can Demographic Histories Explain Long-Term Isolation And Recent Pulses Of Asymmetric Gene Flow Between Highly Divergent Grey Fox Lineages?, Sophie Preckler-Quisquater, Elizabeth M. Kierepka, Dawn M. Reding, Antoinette J. Piaggio, Benjamin N. Sacks

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Secondary contact zones between deeply divergent, yet interfertile, lineages provide windows into the speciation process. North American grey foxes (Urocyon cinereoargenteus) are divided into western and eastern lineages that diverged approximately 1 million years ago. These ancient lineages currently hybridize in a relatively narrow zone of contact in the southern Great Plains, a pattern more commonly observed in smaller-bodied taxa, which suggests relatively recent contact after a long period of allopatry. Based on local ancestry inference with whole-genome sequencing (n = 43), we identified two distinct Holocene pulses of admixture. The older pulse (500–3500 YBP) reflected unidirectional …


Decline Of Seagrass (Posidonia Oceanica) Production Over Two Decades In The Face Of Warming Of The Eastern Mediterranean Sea, Victoria Litsi-Mizan, Pavlos T. Efthymiadis, Vasilis Gerakaris, Oscar Serrano, Manolis Tsapakis, Eugenia T. Apostolaki Jan 2023

Decline Of Seagrass (Posidonia Oceanica) Production Over Two Decades In The Face Of Warming Of The Eastern Mediterranean Sea, Victoria Litsi-Mizan, Pavlos T. Efthymiadis, Vasilis Gerakaris, Oscar Serrano, Manolis Tsapakis, Eugenia T. Apostolaki

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

* The response of Posidonia oceanica meadows to global warming of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, where the increase in sea surface temperature (SST) is particularly severe, is poorly investigated. * Here, we reconstructed the long-term P. oceanica production in 60 meadows along the Greek Seas over two decades (1997–2018), using lepidochronology. We determined the effect of warming on production by reconstructing the annual and maximum (i.e. August) SST, considering the role of other production drivers related to water quality (i.e. Chla, suspended particulate matter, Secchi depth). * Grand mean (±SE) production across all sites and the study period was 48 …