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Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Biodiversity And Ecology Of Lichens Of Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska, Roger Rosentreter
Biodiversity And Ecology Of Lichens Of Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska, Roger Rosentreter
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
We inventoried lichens in Kenai Fjords National Park in Alaska, USA We assembled the known information on occurrence and ecology of lichens in this park by combining field, herbarium, and literature studies. Our results provide baseline data on lichen occurrence that may be used in resource condition assessments, vulnerability assessments, long-term ecological monitoring, and resource management. We report a total of 616 taxa of lichenized fungi from the Park, plus an additional five subspecies and three varieties, all of which are new additions to the National Park Service database for this park unit. An additional five species of nonlichenized lichenicolous …
Passive Restoration Of Vegetation And Biological Soil Crusts Following 80 Years Of Exclusion From Grazing Across The Great Basin, Lea A. Condon, Nicole Pietrasiak, Roger Rosentreter, David A. Pyke
Passive Restoration Of Vegetation And Biological Soil Crusts Following 80 Years Of Exclusion From Grazing Across The Great Basin, Lea A. Condon, Nicole Pietrasiak, Roger Rosentreter, David A. Pyke
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Restoration targets for biological soil crusts are largely unknown. We surveyed seven 80‐year‐old grazing exclosures across northern Nevada for biocrusts to quantify reference conditions at relatively undisturbed sites. Exclosures were associated with the following plant communities: Wyoming big sagebrush, black sagebrush, and areas co‐dominated by winterfat and Wyoming big sagebrush. Cover of biocrusts and shrubs were generally higher than other plant groups at these sites, regardless of being inside or outside of the exclosures, suggesting these groups make up most of the native flora across the region. Important in forming soil structure, cyanobacteria of the order Oscillatoriales were less abundant …
Quantifying The Relative Importance Of Variation In Predation And The Environment For Species Coexistence, Lauren G. Shoemaker, Allison K. Barner, Leonora S. Bittleston, Ashley I. Teufel
Quantifying The Relative Importance Of Variation In Predation And The Environment For Species Coexistence, Lauren G. Shoemaker, Allison K. Barner, Leonora S. Bittleston, Ashley I. Teufel
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Coexistence and food web theory are two cornerstones of the long‐standing effort to understand how species coexist. Although competition and predation are known to act simultaneously in communities, theory and empirical study of these processes continue to be developed largely independently. Here, we integrate modern coexistence theory and food web theory to simultaneously quantify the relative importance of predation and environmental fluctuations for species coexistence. We first examine coexistence in a theoretical, multitrophic model, adding complexity to the food web using machine learning approaches. We then apply our framework to a stochastic model of the rocky intertidal food web, partitioning …
Context-Dependent Dynamics Lead To The Assembly Of Functionally Distinct Microbial Communities, Leonora S. Bittleston, Matti Gralka, Gabriel E. Levanthal, Itzhak Mizrahi, Otto X. Cordero
Context-Dependent Dynamics Lead To The Assembly Of Functionally Distinct Microbial Communities, Leonora S. Bittleston, Matti Gralka, Gabriel E. Levanthal, Itzhak Mizrahi, Otto X. Cordero
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Niche construction through interspecific interactions can condition future community states on past ones. However, the extent to which such history dependency can steer communities towards functionally different states remains a subject of active debate. Using bacterial communities collected from wild pitchers of the carnivorous pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea, we test the effects of history on composition and function across communities assembled in synthetic pitcher plant microcosms. We find that the diversity of assembled communities is determined by the diversity of the system at early, pre-assembly stages. Species composition is also contingent on early community states, not only because of …
Tropical Pitcher Plants (Nepenthes) Act As Ecological Filters By Altering Properties Of Their Fluid Microenvironments, Kadeem J. Gilbert, Leonora S. Bittleston, Wenfei Tong, Naomi E. Pierce
Tropical Pitcher Plants (Nepenthes) Act As Ecological Filters By Altering Properties Of Their Fluid Microenvironments, Kadeem J. Gilbert, Leonora S. Bittleston, Wenfei Tong, Naomi E. Pierce
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Characteristics of host species can alter how other, interacting species assemble into communities by acting as ecological filters. Pitchers of tropical pitcher plants (Nepenthes) host diverse communities of aquatic arthropods and microbes in nature. This plant genus exhibits considerable interspecific diversity in morphology and physiology; for example, different species can actively control the pH of their pitcher fluids and some species produce viscoelastic fluids. Our study investigated the extent to which Nepenthes species differentially regulate pitcher fluid traits under common garden conditions, and the effects that these trait differences had on their associated communities. Sixteen species of Nepenthes …
Do Foliar Endophytes Matter In Litter Decomposition?, Emily R. Wolfe, Daniel J. Ballhorn
Do Foliar Endophytes Matter In Litter Decomposition?, Emily R. Wolfe, Daniel J. Ballhorn
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Litter decomposition rates are affected by a variety of abiotic and biotic factors, including the presence of fungal endophytes in host plant tissues. This review broadly analyzes the findings of 67 studies on the roles of foliar endophytes in litter decomposition, and their effects on decomposition rates. From 29 studies and 1 review, we compiled a comprehensive table of 710 leaf-associated fungal taxa, including the type of tissue these taxa were associated with and isolated from, whether they were reported as endo- or epiphytic, and whether they had reported saprophytic abilities. Aquatic (i.e., in-stream) decomposition studies of endophyte-affected litter were …
Genotypic Diversity And Host-Specificity Of Frankia Bacteria Associated With Sympatric Populations Of Alnus Rubra And Alnus Rhombifolia In Oregon, Mehmet Ali Balkan, Nathan U. Stewart, Emily S. Kauffman, Emily R. Wolfe, Daniel J. Ballhorn
Genotypic Diversity And Host-Specificity Of Frankia Bacteria Associated With Sympatric Populations Of Alnus Rubra And Alnus Rhombifolia In Oregon, Mehmet Ali Balkan, Nathan U. Stewart, Emily S. Kauffman, Emily R. Wolfe, Daniel J. Ballhorn
Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Biological nitrogen fixation is one of the most critical processes contributing to ecosystem productivity and stability on a global scale. In temperate climates of the northern hemisphere, plant-root associated bacteria of the genus Frankia are the major nitrogen fixers in forest environments. Trees belonging to the genus Alnus are the most widespread hosts of Frankia in the Pacific Northwest, and a myriad of biotic and abiotic factors can influence the robustness of this symbiosis. Host identity and bacterial strain are important features that can impact Alnus-Frankia association, but little is known about the interplay of intrageneric hosts that co-occur in …