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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Landscape Scale: Inter- And Intraspecific Variation In Plant Interactions Along A Stress Gradient In The Sheep Range Of Nevada, Jordan Dowell
Landscape Scale: Inter- And Intraspecific Variation In Plant Interactions Along A Stress Gradient In The Sheep Range Of Nevada, Jordan Dowell
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
Impending threats to shrubland ecosystems, posed by climate change, necessitate niche modeling efforts to project vegetation range shifts. However, efforts often remain unguided by individual-scale interspecific plant interactions. The stress gradient hypothesis posits that facilitation should increase in areas of high abiotic stress, only if the individuals are able to ameliorate the surrounding area via functional traits. The Sheep Range of Nevada was used to assess the role of functional traits as predictors of plant association. Larrea tridentata, Coleogyne ramosissima, and Artemisia nova were selected as shrubs with variable life history strategies and ranges in order to identify general patterns …
Effects Of Elevated Temperature And Elevated Co2 On Leaf Carbon Fluxes In Boreal Conifers: Lab And Field Studies, Mirindi Eric Dusenge
Effects Of Elevated Temperature And Elevated Co2 On Leaf Carbon Fluxes In Boreal Conifers: Lab And Field Studies, Mirindi Eric Dusenge
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Rising CO2 may warm northern latitudes up to 10 °C by the end of the century. However, responses of plant physiological processes (such as photosynthesis and respiration) and growth to climate change remain uncertain. Seedlings and mature trees of tamarack (a deciduous species) and black spruce (an evergreen species), North America dominant conifers, were exposed to combined warming (up to +9 ˚C) and elevated CO2 (up to +300 ppm). In seedlings, stomatal conductance (gs) tended to increase with warming in tamarack seedlings, while gsdeclined with warming in spruce. In both species, CO2 had …
Warming Up: Climate Change Related Shifts Of Mycorrhizal Fungal Communities In High Latitude Ecosystems, Megan Rae Devan
Warming Up: Climate Change Related Shifts Of Mycorrhizal Fungal Communities In High Latitude Ecosystems, Megan Rae Devan
Biology ETDs
This dissertation examines how climate change affects mycorrhizal fungal communities in boreal and arctic ecosystems. In chapter one, I revealed that increases in fire severity and related increases in deciduous tree dominance result in greater Ascomycota relative abundance (RA) and subsequent declines in Basidiomycota RA. In chapter two I analyzed the effects of post-fire mycorrhizal fungal communites on host growth. There were trends at the fungal genus level that were largely reflected at the guild level across all hosts; however, there were some fungal genera that had the opposite effect on different host species. In chapter three, I found host …