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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Harnessing Citizen Science And Collections Data For Invasive Plant Surveillance, Adin L. Ring
Harnessing Citizen Science And Collections Data For Invasive Plant Surveillance, Adin L. Ring
Library Map Prize
Our main source of information about the distribution of invasive plants in the United States comes from occurrence records in three categories: biological collections (physical plant specimens in museums), citizen science (opportunistic observations by untrained civilians), and invasion monitoring (structured observation by government or non-profit agencies). This study compiles a set of 3.1 million occurrence records of 3,578 introduced plant species in the continental United States, and infers spatial, temporal, and taxonomic biases by comparing the three categories of data. We find that citizen science contributes the largest bulk of records, and does better capturing visually conspicuous plants and very …
Do Elephants Eat More Trees When Less Grass Is Available? A Field Study In Kruger National Park, South Africa., Emily Goldberg
Do Elephants Eat More Trees When Less Grass Is Available? A Field Study In Kruger National Park, South Africa., Emily Goldberg
Yale Day of Data
Although African bush elephants are often responsible for the majority of herbivore-driven savanna tree mortality, confusion remains regarding the factors that influence their diet. Some elephants either browse or graze almost exclusively, while others balance the two, and the determinants of this variation remain poorly understood. I seek to determine whether grass availability controls the proportion of woody plants in elephant diet and, therefore, the amount of damage elephants do to trees while foraging. Preliminary analysis using already-available data on grass biomass, elephant density, and elephant damage to trees suggest that tree damage is in fact negatively correlated with grass …