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Biodiversity

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Biodiversity

Doctoral Dissertations

Publication Year

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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Systematics And Biogeography Of The Cortinarius Violaceus Group And Sequestrate Evolution In Cortinarius (Agaricales), Emma Harrower Dec 2017

Systematics And Biogeography Of The Cortinarius Violaceus Group And Sequestrate Evolution In Cortinarius (Agaricales), Emma Harrower

Doctoral Dissertations

Phylogenetics is a powerful tool used for illuminating the diversity of life on Earth, their evolution and their ecology. I created a multi-gene phylogenetic tree of Cortinarius section Cortinarius and uncovered five previously overlooked species, increasing the number of species in the section from seven to twelve. All members of the clade possess both cheilocystidia and pleurocystidia and possess a pigment known as (R)-39,49-dihydroxybphenylalanine. Ancestral state reconstruction estimated that the ancestral host was most likely an angiosperm, switching hosts when encountering novel host species in new lands, and only C. violaceus associating with the Pinaceae in North America. Biogeographic analysis …


Conservation Planning In A Changing World, Austin Walker Milt Aug 2015

Conservation Planning In A Changing World, Austin Walker Milt

Doctoral Dissertations

As a science and practice dedicated to preventing, stopping, and reversing negative effects on nature, conservation is constantly faced with new challenges. Combine this fact with the rise of large, freely available datasets and computational power, and the result is a need to advance the methods and conceptual approach to conservation planning. In my dissertation I present novel methods and address research questions that aim to keep conservation science and practice relevant and effective in a changing world. This picture of continual change is illustrated in Chapter 1, in which I explore how the ongoing collection of observations of rare …