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Full-Text Articles in Biodiversity

Discovery And Delimitation: Criconematid Nematodes Of North American Grasslands, Magdalena Jean Olson Jul 2015

Discovery And Delimitation: Criconematid Nematodes Of North American Grasslands, Magdalena Jean Olson

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Approximately 200 years ago, North American landscapes were dominated by vast expanses of grassland. The Great Plains, an ecologically complex and diverse ecoregion, extended from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Rocky Mountains to the border of the eastern hardwood forest in Indiana. Now the original tallgrass prairie exists in small widely dispersed remnant patches surrounded by agroecosystems. This study is an effort to characterize soil nematode diversity and population structure within those remnant patches. The plant parasitic nematode family Criconematidae serves as our indicator for nematode diversity, due to its global distribution, high abundance in natural …


Transatlantic Disjunction In Fleshy Fungi Iii: Gymnopus Confluens, Karen Hughes, Ronald H. Petersen Apr 2015

Transatlantic Disjunction In Fleshy Fungi Iii: Gymnopus Confluens, Karen Hughes, Ronald H. Petersen

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Phylogeographic data indicate that DNA differences consistently exist between the North American and European allopatric populations of Gymnopus confluens. Conversely, pairing experiments show that collections from both populations were sexually compatible in vitro and detailed morphological examinations of numerous fresh and dried basidiomata do not produce qualitative differences. Percent ITS sequence divergence between Europe and North American collections of G. confluens was 3.25%. Species delineation metrics including Rosenberg’s PAB statistic, PID metrics, RRD ( randomly distributed) and PTP (Poisson Tree Processes ) gave mixed indications that North American and European populations were distinct at species rank. …


New Records Of Merriam’S Shrew (Sorex Merriami) From Western North Dakota, Michael J. Shaughnessy Jr., Neal Woodman Mar 2015

New Records Of Merriam’S Shrew (Sorex Merriami) From Western North Dakota, Michael J. Shaughnessy Jr., Neal Woodman

Neal Woodman

Despite having a broad geographic distribution, Merriam’s Shrew (Sorex merriami Dobson 1890) is known from a relatively few, widely-scattered localities. In North Dakota, the species was known from only a single poorly-preserved specimen collected in 1913 near Medora. We recently collected two new specimens of Merriam’s Shrew from Billings and McKenzie counties in the western quarter of the state. These specimens confirm the presence of S. merriami in North Dakota and better define the northeastern edge of the species’ distribution.