Digital Commons Network^™

Genotype-By-Sequencing Of The Plant-Pathogenic Fungi Pyrenophora Teres And Sphaerulina Musiva Utilizing Ion Torrent Sequence Technology, Jared M. Leboldus, Kasia Kinzer, Jonathan Richards, Zhu Ya, Changhui Yan, Timothy L. Friesen, Robert Brueggeman

Faculty Publications

Genetic and genomics tools to characterize host-pathogen interactions are disproportionately directed to the host because of the focus on resistance. However, understanding the genetics of pathogen virulence is equally important and has been limited by the high cost of denovo genotyping of species with limited marker data. Non-resource-prohibitive methods that overcome the limitation of genotyping are now available through genotype-by-sequencing (GBS). The use of a two-enzyme restriction-associated DNA (RAD)-GBS method adapted for Ion Torrent sequencing technology provided robust and reproducible high-density genotyping of several fungal species. A total of 5783 and 2373 unique loci, 'sequence tags', containing 16441 and 9992 …

Directional Dominance On Stature And Cognition In Diverse Human Populations, Peter K. Joshi, Tonu Esko, Hannele Mattsson, Niina Eklund, Ilaria Gandin, Teresa Nutile, Anne U. Jackson, Claudia Schurmann, Albert V. Smith, Weihua Zhang, Yukinori Okada, Alena Stančáková, Jessica D. Faul, Wei Zhao, Traci M. Bartz, Maria Pina Concas, Nora Franceschini, Stefan Enroth, Veronique Vitart, Stella Trompet, Xiuqing Guo, Daniel I. Chasman, Jeffrey R. O'Connel, Tanguy Corre, Suraj S. Nongmaithem, Yuning Chen, Massimo Mangino, Daniela Ruggiero, Michela Traglia, Aliki Eleni Farmaki, Tim Kacprowski, Andrew Bjonnes, Ashley Van Der Spek

Faculty Publications

Homozygosity has long been associated with rare, often devastating, Mendelian disorders, and Darwin was one of the first to recognize that inbreeding reduces evolutionary fitness. However, the effect of the more distant parental relatedness that is common in modern human populations is less well understood. Genomic data now allow us to investigate the effects of homozygosity on traits of public health importance by observing contiguous homozygous segments (runs of homozygosity), which are inferred to be homozygous along their complete length. Given the low levels of genome-wide homozygosity prevalent in most human populations, information is required on very large numbers of …

Thriving In The Cold: Glacial Expansion And Post-Glacial Contraction Of A Temperate Terrestrial Salamander (Plethodon Serratus), Catherine E. Newman, Christopher C. Austin

Faculty Publications

© 2015 Newman, Austin. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The dynamic geologic history of the southeastern United States has played a major role in shaping the geographic distributions of amphibians in the region. In the phylogeographic literature, the predominant pattern of distribution shifts through time of temperate species is one of contraction during glacial maxima and persistence in refugia. However, the diverse biology and ecology of amphibian species suggest that a …

Lithium In Drinking Water And Suicide Mortality: Interplay With Lithium Prescriptions, Marco Helbich, Michael Leitner, Nestor D. Kapusta

Faculty Publications

Background: Little is known about the effects of lithium intake through drinking water on suicide. This intake originates either from natural rock and soil elution and/or accumulation of lithium-based pharmaceuticals in ground water. Aims: To examine the interplay between natural lithium in drinking water, prescribed lithium-based pharmaceuticals and suicide in Austria. Method: Spatial Bayesian regressions for males, females and pooled suicide mortality rates were estimated. Results: Although the expected inverse association between lithium levels in drinking water and suicide mortality was confirmed for males and for total suicide rates, the relationship for females was not significant. The models do not …

The Utility Of Total Lightning Trends In Diagnosing Single-Cell Thunderstorm Severity: Examples From The Central Appalachians Region, Paul Miller, Andrew Ellis, Stephen Keighton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Successional Grid, Erin Percevault

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Construction Of The Homeless Individual: Contrasting The Effects Of Social Policy On Public Perceptions Of The Homeless During Two Periods Of United States History, Megan T. O’Connor

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

Interspecific Competition Affects Evolutionary Links Between Cavity Nesting, Migration And Clutch Size In Old World Flycatchers (Muscicapdae), Sahas Barve, Nicholas A. Mason

Faculty Publications

© 2015 British Ornithologists' Union. The ecology of cavity nesting in passerine birds has been studied extensively, yet there are no phylogenetic comparative studies that quantify differences in life history traits between cavity- and open-nesting birds within a passerine family. We test existing hypotheses regarding the evolutionary significance of cavity nesting in the Old World flycatchers (Muscicapidae). We used a multi-locus phylogeny of 252 species to reconstruct the evolutionary history of cavity nesting and to quantify correlations between nest types and life history traits. Within a phylogenetic generalized linear model framework, we found that cavity-nesting species are larger than open-nesting …

Drivers Of Observed Biotic Homogenization In Pine Barrens Of Central Wisconsin, Daijiang Li, Donald Waller

Faculty Publications

© 2015 by the Ecological Society of America. Fire suppression throughout the 20th century greatly altered plant communities in fire-dominated systems across North America. Our ability to assess these effects over the long term, however, is handicapped by the paucity of baseline data. Here, we used detailed baseline data from the 1950s to track changes in the over- and understory composition of pinebarrens vegetation growing on sandy, glacial lake-bed sediments in central Wisconsin. We expected fire suppression to favor succession to closed-canopy conditions, leading to decreases in shade-intolerant and fire-Adapted species and consequent reductions in alpha and gamma diversity. We …

S15rs Sgr No. 18 (Pre-Law Program), Jacob Phagan

Student Senate Enrolled Legislation

No abstract provided.

Editorial, Michael Leitner, Marco Helbich

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Hurricane Risk Variability Along The Gulf Of Mexico Coastline, Jill C. Trepanier, Kelsey N. Ellis, Clay S. Tucker

Faculty Publications

Hurricane risk characteristics are examined across the U. S. Gulf of Mexico coastline using a hexagonal tessellation. Using an extreme value model, parameters are collected representing the rate or λ (frequency), the scale or σ (range), and the shape or ζ (intensity) of the extreme wind distribution. These latent parameters and the 30-year return level are visualized across the grid. The greatest 30-year return levels are located toward the center of the Gulf of Mexico, and for inland locations, along the borders of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Using a geographically weighted regression model, the relationship of these parameters to sea …

Seismic Stratigraphy Of The Central South China Sea Basin And Implications For Neotectonics, Chun Feng Li, Jiabiao Li, Weiwei Ding, Dieter Franke, Yongjian Yao, Hesheng Shi, Xiong Pang, Ying Cao, Jian Lin, Denise K. Kulhanek, Trevor Williams, Rui Bao, Anne Briais, Elizabeth A. Brown, Yifeng Chen, Peter D. Clift, Frederick S. Colwell, Kelsie A. Dadd, Iván Hernández-Almeida, Xiao Long Huang, Sangmin Hyun, Tao Jiang, Anthony A.P. Koppers, Qianyu Li, Chuanlian Liu, Qingsong Liu, Zhifei Liu, Renata H. Nagai, Alyssa Peleo-Alampay, Xin Su, Zhen Sun, Maria Luisa G. Tejada, Hai Son Trinh

Faculty Publications

©2015. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. Coring/logging data and physical property measurements from International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 349 are integrated with, and correlated to, reflection seismic data to map seismic sequence boundaries and facies of the central basin and neighboring regions of the South China Sea. First-order sequence boundaries are interpreted, which are Oligocene/Miocene, middle Miocene/late Miocene, Miocene/Pliocene, and Pliocene/Pleistocene boundaries. A characteristic early Pleistocene strong reflector is also identified, which marks the top of extensive carbonate-rich deposition in the southern East and Southwest Subbasins. The fossil spreading ridge and the boundary between the East and Southwest Subbasins …

Fall Armyworm (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) Ecology In Southeastern Cotton, Jarrod T. Hardke, Gus M. Lorenz, B. Rogers Leonard

Faculty Publications

The fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith), is a sporadic pest with a diverse host range. This insect occasionally causes damage to cotton across the United States from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast. Fall armyworm has been problematic in cotton due to its overall tolerance to many insecticide use strategies and difficulty in finding and surveying field infestations with sampling protocols. A review of insect biology, description of life stages, behavior and host strain identification, injury to cotton, and potential management options for the southeastern United States are presented.

Regional Disparities In Obesity Prevalence In The United States: A Spatial Regime Analysis, Candice A. Myers, Tim Slack, Corby K. Martin, Stephanie T. Broyles, Steven B. Heymsfield

Faculty Publications

Objective Significant clusters of high- and low-obesity counties have been demonstrated across the United States (US). This study examined regional disparities in obesity prevalence and differences in the related structural characteristics across regions of the US. Methods Drawing on model-based estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, regional differences in county-level adult obesity prevalence (percent of the adult population [≥ 20 years] that was obese [BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2] within a county, 2009) were assessed with a LISA (Local Indicators of Spatial Association) analysis to identify geographic concentrations of high and low obesity levels. Regional regime analysis was …

Ant Community Structure And Response To Disturbances On Coastal Dunes Of Gulf Of Mexico, Xuan Chen, Benjamin Adams, Cody Bergeron, Alexander Sabo, Linda Hooper-Bùi

Faculty Publications

Coastal dunes are complex and fragile ecosystems. The decrease in environmental stressors from sea to inland creates zonation patterns of habitats, which support high biodiversity. Although coastal dunes have been examined in primary succession studies for more than 100 years, invertebrates have received much less attention than other taxa. In this study, we examined ant community composition and its relationship with vegetation structure on dunes, and used ants as indicators to reveal the influence of anthropogenic disturbances on these habitats. Quadrat sampling, hand collecting, and beating plants were used to sample ants on coastal dunes fringing the northern Gulf of …

Decline Of Yangtze River Water And Sediment Discharge: Impact From Natural And Anthropogenic Changes, S. L. Yang, K. H. Xu, J. D. Milliman, H. F. Yang, C. S. Wu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mechanistic Species Distribution Modelling As A Link Between Physiology And Conservation, Tyler G. Evans, Sarah E. Diamond, Morgan W. Kelly

Faculty Publications

© The Author 2015. Climate change conservation planning relies heavily on correlative species distribution models that estimate future areas of occupancy based on environmental conditions encountered in present-day ranges. The approach benefits from rapid assessment of vulnerability over a large number of organisms, but can have poor predictive power when transposed to novel environments and reveals little in the way of causal mechanisms that define changes in species distribution or abundance. Having conservation planning rely largely on this single approach also increases the risk of policy failure. Mechanistic models that are parameterized with physiological information are expected to be more …

How Global Biodiversity Hotspots May Go Unrecognized: Lessons From The North American Coastal Plain, Reed F. Noss, William J. Platt, Bruce A. Sorrie, Alan S. Weakley, D. Bruce Means, Jennifer Costanza, Robert K. Peet

Faculty Publications

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Biodiversity hotspots are conservation priorities. We identify the North American Coastal Plain (NACP) as a global hotspot based on the classic definition, a region with > 1500 endemic plant species and > 70% habitat loss. This region has been bypassed in prior designations due to misconceptions and myths about its ecology and history. These fallacies include: (1) young age of the NACP, climatic instability over time and submergence during high sea-level stands; (2) climatic and environmental homogeneity; (3) closed forest as the climax vegetation; and (4) fire regimes that are mostly anthropogenic. We show that …

African Cowboys On The Argentine Pampas: Their Disappearance From The Historical Record, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Blue, The Gray, And The Green: Toward An Environmental History Of The Civil War, Theresa L. Young

Civil War Book Review

Environmental History More than “Waving the Muddy Shirt"

The works contained in The Blue, the Gray, and the Green: Toward an Environmental History of the Civil War are groundbreaking, not only for their content but also for their potential to expand the connections between the two s....

Sixteenth-Century Soil Carbon Sequestration Rates Based On Mexican Land-Grant Documents, Andrew Sluyter, Richard Hunter

Faculty Publications

A significant gap in our understanding of global change involves the linkages between historical land-use and land-cover change (LULCC), Holocene terrestrial carbon (C) pool fluxes, and climate change. To address that research problem, this method uses land grants for sheep ranches awarded in early colonial (1521–1620 CE) Mexico to quantify the amount of land converted from cropland to pastureland. Soil is the largest terrestrial C pool, and converting cropland to pastureland significantly increases soil C sequestration rates, thereby reducing atmospheric C. The land grants and associated archival documents contain location-specific information about soils, vegetation, hydrology, and other variables that make …

Dreaming Of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation In Colonial Mexico City, Andrew Sluyter

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

African Fire Cultures, Cattle Ranching, And Colonial Landscape Transformations In The Neotropics, Andrew Sluyter, Chris Duvall

Faculty Publications

Fire regimes emerge partly from human activities that reflect cultural-ecological knowledge of the relationships among fire, vegetation, grazing, climate, and other variables, as well as social relations. More knowledge of such “fire cultures,” past and present, therefore remains necessary to better understand the causes and persistent consequences of landscape burning. In the neotropics, people have used fire for centuries to manage livestock pastures. Conventional wisdom has long posited that such practices derived solely from antecedent European and indigenous, Native American fire cultures. Analysis of accounts of rangeland burning from throughout the neotropics during colonial times, however, demonstrates that ranchers incorporated …

Orbitally Forced Ice Sheet Fluctuations During The Marinoan Snowball Earth Glaciation, Douglas I. Benn, Guillaume Le Hir, Huiming Bao, Yannick Donnadieu, Christophe Dumas, Edward J. Fleming, Michael J. Hambrey, Emily A. Mcmillan, Michael S. Petronis, Gilles Ramstein, Carl T.E. Stevenson, Peter M. Wynn, Ian J. Fairchild

Faculty Publications

Two global glaciations occurred during the Neoproterozoic. Snowball Earth theory posits that these were terminated after millions of years of frigidity when initial warming from rising atmospheric CO2concentrations was amplified by the reduction of ice cover and hence a reduction in planetary albedo. This scenario implies that most of the geological record of ice cover was deposited in a brief period of melt-back. However, deposits in low palaeo-latitudes show evidence of glacial-interglacial cycles. Here we analyse the sedimentology and oxygen and sulphur isotopic signatures of Marinoan Snowball glaciation deposits from Svalbard, in the Norwegian High Arctic. The deposits preserve a …

Orbitally Forced Ice Sheet Fluctuations During The Marinoan Snowball Earth Glaciation, Douglas I. Benn, Guillaume Le Hir, Huiming Bao, Yannick Donnadieu, Christophe Dumas, Edward J. Fleming, Michael J. Hambrey, Emily A. Mcmillan, Michael S. Petronis, Gilles Ramstein, Carl T.E. Stevenson, Peter M. Wynn, Ian J. Fairchild

Faculty Publications

Two global glaciations occurred during the Neoproterozoic. Snowball Earth theory posits that these were terminated after millions of years of frigidity when initial warming from rising atmospheric CO2concentrations was amplified by the reduction of ice cover and hence a reduction in planetary albedo. This scenario implies that most of the geological record of ice cover was deposited in a brief period of melt-back. However, deposits in low palaeo-latitudes show evidence of glacial-interglacial cycles. Here we analyse the sedimentology and oxygen and sulphur isotopic signatures of Marinoan Snowball glaciation deposits from Svalbard, in the Norwegian High Arctic. The deposits preserve a …

Physiological Profiles As Indicators Of Response To Hurricane Disturbance For Three Coastal Wetland Species, Alexandria Lynn Pivovaroff, Cheryl Swift, Loretta L. Battaglia, Brittany Kunz, William J. Platt, Carrie L. Yoder

Faculty Publications

© Coastal Education & Research Foundation 2015. Hurricanes alter light and water availability via canopy damage and storm surge delivery and are expected to intensify with climate change. Plant species respond to environmental changes by making physiological adjustments in situ or through distribution changes. Three years after Hurricane Katrina, we compared functional traits and water relations among three species along the coenocline at Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Fairhope, Alabama, U.S.A. Based on posthurricane distribution changes for these species, we hypothesized that (1) Cladium mariscus, whose distribution expanded slightly, is responsive to increased light availability in the disturbed forest …

Discordance Between Morphological And Molecular Species Boundaries Among Caribbean Species Of The Reef Sponge Callyspongia, Melissa B. Debiasse, Michael E. Hellberg

Faculty Publications

© 2015 The Authors. Sponges are among the most species-rich and ecologically important taxa on coral reefs, yet documenting their diversity is difficult due to the simplicity and plasticity of their morphological characters. Genetic attempts to identify species are hampered by the slow rate of mitochondrial sequence evolution characteristic of sponges and some other basal metazoans. Here we determine species boundaries of the Caribbean coral reef sponge genus Callyspongia using a multilocus, model-based approach. Based on sequence data from one mitochondrial (COI), one ribosomal (28S), and two single-copy nuclear protein-coding genes, we found evolutionarily distinct lineages were not concordant with …

Derivation Of The Freshwater Fish Fauna Of Central America Revisited: Myers's Hypothesis In The Twenty-First Century, Wilfredo A. Matamoros, Caleb D. Mcmahan, Prosanta Chakrabarty, James S. Albert, Jacob F. Schaefer

Faculty Publications

© The Willi Hennig Society 2014. Although attempts to understand Central American freshwater fish provincialism date to the 1960s, early efforts lacked the wealth of distributional data now available. Biogeographic work on Central American freshwater fishes has been largely descriptive and regional, and lacked a broader synthesis. Here we use parsimony analysis of endemicity (PAE) to elucidate faunistic relationships between major drainages and to delineate areas of endemism. We then perform a Brooks parsimony analysis (BPA) on the resulting areas. The PAE recovered a primary division between four Pacific and six Atlantic slope areas of endemism. In contrast, the BPA …

Lsu General Catalog 2015-2016, Louisiana State University And Agricultural And Mechanical College

LSU General Catalog

The LSU General Catalog describes all undergraduate and graduate departments and programs with degree requirements and courses offered for each one. The LSU General Catalog includes information on registration and financial aid as well as academic services offered to all students.