Biology Commons^™

Morphological Variabilities And Identification Of Yam (Dioscorea Spp.) Genotypes From Major Growing Regions In Tanzania, Joseph I Massawe, Gladness E Temu

Tanzania Journal of Science

Yam (Dioscorea spp.) is a vegetatively propagated crop that belongs to the family Dioscoreaceae. In Tanzania, yam is mainly grown as a source of food and income generation, especially for smallholder farmers. In this study, an assessment of morphological variations among 74 genotypes of Dioscorea spp. collected from six major growing regions was conducted. Yam genotypes were maintained and planted at Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute-Kibaha for characterization. Data from fifty morphological variables were subjected to multivariate analysis using principal component analysis and cluster analysis. The first nine principal components with Eigenvalues > 1 accounted for 86.28% of the total variations. Some …

The Emerging Value Of The Viroid Model In Understanding Plant Responses To Foreign Rnas, Junfei Ma

Theses and Dissertations

RNAs play essential roles in various biological processes. Mounting evidence has demonstrated that RNA subcellular localization and intercellular trafficking govern their functions in coordinating plant growth at the organismal level. Beyond that, plants constantly encounter foreign RNAs (i.e., RNAs from pathogens including viruses and viroids). The subcellular localizations of RNAs are crucial for their function. While numerous types of RNAs (i.e., mRNAs, small RNAs, rRNAs, tRNAs, and long noncoding RNAs) have been found to traffic in a non-cell-autonomous fashion within plants, the underlying regulatory mechanism remains unclear. Viroids are single-stranded circular noncoding RNAs, which entirely rely …

Callery Pear Allelopathy Study, Michaela J. Woods, Jonathan T. Bauer, Dena Schaeffer, Ryan W. Mcewan

Five Rivers MetroParks Collaboration Data Archive

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Disturbance (Mowing) On Florivory And Floral Defenses In Solanum Elaeagnifolium, A Noxious And Worldwide Invasive Weed, Alejandro Rafael Vasquez Marcano

Theses and Dissertations

Chapter 1: Literature Review- In this literature review we have examined weed management as it concerns urban and agricultural ecosystems, as well as the need for mowing assessments as it relates to floral traits and defense against herbivory.

Chapter 2: Experiments- In the experiments we examined the role of mowing on floral growth traits, floral defense traits, and their effect on Manduca sexta specialist herbivores.

Chapter 3: Results- In the results we found SLN flowers to have larger diameters than unmowed flowers; however, flower mass was in line with our predictions as unmowed flowers were heavier in high mowing frequency …

Quantifying The Effect Of Disturbance On Native Mojave Desert Shrubs, Tamara J. Wynne

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Disturbance can come in many different forms. In our studies, we looked at the impact of a solar photovoltaic facility on native plants growing inside and outside of the facility, alteration in precipitation (simulated) on four native shrubs and the impact of applying supplemental water as a function of volume and frequency to establish native shrubs such as might occur at restoration sites. Disturbance is becoming a more common phenomenon in many ecosystems throughout the world, increasing the need for studies that quantify the impact at the plant and ecosystem level. Each research project revealed different plant responses, such as …

Arch Rock (Width In Millimeters), Peter G. Butterfield, Ryan W. Mcewan

Data Files: White Oaks in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest

Data in this collection regards white oak trees (Quercus alba) in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest, Vinton County, Ohio. Affiliated images are available at http://ecommons.udayton.edu/mcewanlab_6_images.

File type: .csv

About the data:

• Column A: Year
• Column B and onward: Measurements of tree rings in millimeters; sample title appears in row 1
• Measurements taken using a Velmex Unislide and the Tellervo software application.

Coordinates Of Each Sample, Peter G. Butterfield, Ryan W. Mcewan

Data Files: White Oaks in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest

Data in this collection regards white oak trees (Quercus alba) in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest, Vinton County, Ohio. Affiliated images are available at http://ecommons.udayton.edu/mcewanlab_6_images.

File type: .csv

About the data:

• Column A: Year
• Column B and onward: Measurements of tree rings in millimeters; sample title appears in row 1
• Measurements taken using a Velmex Unislide and the Tellervo software application.

Arch Rock (Widths In Dendrochronology Format), Peter G. Butterfield, Ryan W. Mcewan

Data Files: White Oaks in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest

Data in this collection regards white oak trees (Quercus alba) in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest, Vinton County, Ohio. Affiliated images are available at http://ecommons.udayton.edu/mcewanlab_6_images.

File type: .csv

About the data:

• Column A: Year
• Column B and onward: Measurements of tree rings in millimeters; sample title appears in row 1
• Measurements taken using a Velmex Unislide and the Tellervo software application.

Watch Rock (Widths In Dendrochronology Format), Peter G. Butterfield, Ryan W. Mcewan

Data Files: White Oaks in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest

Data in this collection regards white oak trees (Quercus alba) in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest, Vinton County, Ohio. Affiliated images are available at http://ecommons.udayton.edu/mcewanlab_6_images.

File type: .csv

About the data:

• Column A: Year
• Column B and onward: Measurements of tree rings in millimeters; sample title appears in row 1
• Measurements taken using a Velmex Unislide and the Tellervo software application.

Watch Rock (Widths In Millimeters), Peter G. Butterfield, Ryan W. Mcewan

Data Files: White Oaks in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest

Data in this collection regards white oak trees (Quercus alba) in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest, Vinton County, Ohio. Affiliated images are available at http://ecommons.udayton.edu/mcewanlab_6_images.

File type: .csv

About the data:

• Column A: Year
• Column B and onward: Measurements of tree rings in millimeters; sample title appears in row 1
• Measurements taken using a Velmex Unislide and the Tellervo software application.

Sample Diameter And Date Of Establishment, Peter G. Butterfield, Ryan W. Mcewan

Data Files: White Oaks in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest

Data in this collection regards white oak trees (Quercus alba) in Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest, Vinton County, Ohio. Affiliated images are available at http://ecommons.udayton.edu/mcewanlab_6_images.

File type: .csv

About the data:

• Column A: Year
• Column B and onward: Measurements of tree rings in millimeters; sample title appears in row 1
• Measurements taken using a Velmex Unislide and the Tellervo software application.

Spatiotemporal Transcriptome Diversity And Responses To Salinity Tolerance In The Extremophyte Schrenkiella Parvula, Chathura Wijesinghege

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Schrenkiella parvula is an extremophyte model related to the most widely studied plant model, Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica crops in the mustard family (Brassicaceae). It can thrive in highly saline environments where the soil is enriched in Na⁺, K⁺, Li⁺, borates, and chlorides. Understanding how this extremophyte can survive high salinity with genomic adaptations can provide insight into developing stress resilient crops in the future. Gene expression of S. parvula in response to salt has been investigated using shoot and root tissue from mature vegetative-phase plants. However, prior studies have not examined the transcript …

Influence Of Plant Density On Rainfall Interception By Spartina Alterniflora, Hannah K. Longaberger

Honors College Theses

Abstract

Spartina alterniflora is an abundant plant in eastern US and Gulf coast salt marshes; it is important in maintaining a diverse ecosystem. Salt marshes are impacted by rainstorms, which may affect erosion events. This project examined the partitioning of rainfall on single plants of various sizes and on central plants within different canopy densities of S. alterniflora. By calculating the rain stemflow (SF), throughfall (TF), and water adhered to the stem in S. alterniflora, we gained insight to rainfall partitioning with different plant features. My research found no statistically significant relationship between different plant features and SF, TF, …

2022 Fall Newsletter, Plaster Creek Stewards

Newsletters

Highlights:

Reflections on Our Mission

Fall Event 2022: Future Thriving

Parking Lot Retrofits - A New PCS Strategy

Research Updates

Betty Kliewer Joins the Team

Planting Partners, Interns, and Community Organizations

Support Our Work

Upcoming Event: End-of-Year Celebration

Wetlands In Our Backyard: A Review Of Wetland Types In Virginia State Parks, Kirsten Bauer, Benjamin K. Campbell

Virginia Journal of Science

Wetlands constitute a significant component of Virginia’s natural resources and heritage. Though historically they have been discounted—and often denigrated—the exceptional value of wetlands is currently growing in recognition and appreciation. In addition to the value provided by extracted resources and ecological regulation, wetlands also offer people the opportunity to enrich themselves through cultural, educational, and recreational pursuits. The state parks of Virginia provide access to a variety of ecosystems, including a wide array of wetland types. In this review, we document the diversity of wetlands in Virginia State Parks through a typology that groups wetland systems into the three principal …

Arabidopsis Shoot Gravitropism Requires The Mediator Coactivator Complex, Gabriella Newton

Honors Theses

Gravitropism is a plant response to gravity in directing the growth of its organs, such as the root and the stem. Gravity is sensed by statocytes, unique cells that contain starch-filled amyloplasts, which trigger gravitropic growth response by modulating the distribution of growth hormone auxin in the elongation zone of the stem and root. Despite the fact that multiple factors have been identified as key regulators of shoot negative gravitropism, how these factors are regulated at the transcriptional level is largely unknown. In this study, we explore the role of transcriptional machinery in regulating shoot gravity sensing and responses by …

Chromosome Number Evolution, Phylogeography, And The Effects Of Climate Change On Species Distributions In Polyploid Plant Systems, Courtney H. Babin

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Polyploidy, a term used to describe organisms with cells having more than two paired sets of chromosomes, is a significant driver of diversification among land plants. Over a century of research has advanced our understanding of polyploidization in some taxa, but polyploid organisms remain understudied. In this dissertation, I investigate chromosome number evolution, phylogeographic structure, genetic differentiation, and the effects of climate change on ploidy level distribution using polyploid plant systems. In the first chapter, I inferred a molecular phylogeny of Allium, an economically important genus that includes cultivated crops and ornamentals, to investigate evolutionary transitions in chromosome number …

De Novo Transcriptome Analysis Of Orange Jasmine (Murraya Paniculata) Infected With Citrus Greening Disease, Jeffrey Aquino Gomez

Theses and Dissertations

Citrus greening disease, also known as Huanglongbing, is one of the most devastating citrus diseases in the world. Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas) is a non-culturable, phloem-limited bacterium that serves as one of two vectors for the transmission of any of the three kinds of greening disease. In cooler climates, the African variant transmitted by the African citrus psyllid (Trioza erytreae) is more prevalent. The Asian form transmitted by the Asian citrus psyllid (Diaphorina citri) where is predominant in warmer conditions and recently discover the American form who is also transmit by Diaphorina citri, was discover in Brazil but has also …

Comparison Of Plant Richness And Density In Crp-42 Fields Between 2018 And 2022, Liz Wilgenbusch, Ai Wen Ph.D.

Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) Symposium

Recently, the number of pollinators have decreased dramatically throughout the United States. Pollinators play an important role in food production with around ⅓ of the world’s food crops being dependent on pollinators. Providing a high-forage habitat for pollinators is a proposed solution to combat their decline. In the upper Midwest United States, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) helps protect pollinator habitats by providing farmers with annual payments to retire their old farmland. The purpose of this study was to compare plant density and richness in CRP fields between year 3 and year 7 post planting to find trends in the …

Orthotrichum Lyellii As An Active Moss Biomonitor: Examining The Interplay Between Ambient Pm10, Bulk Deposition And Heavy Metals In An Urban Environment, Scott Bradley Kiel

Dissertations and Theses

The importance of monitoring and preventing pollution in the environment is a globally recognized issue. Of the criteria pollutants outlined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, particulate matter is among these least understood in relation to toxicity and most wide-spread. Many governments have employed continuous air quality monitoring networks to track ambient levels of particulate matter, but are often too widespread to capture the heterogeneity of the urban environment, especially for heavy metal deposition. In Portland, OR, the epiphytic moss Orthotrichum lyellii was successfully used as a low-cost passive biomonitor to increase the spatial resolution of pollution around the …

Post-Embryonic Phase Transitions Mediated By Polycomb Repressive Complexes In Plants, Valerie Hinsch, Samuel Adkins, Darren Manuela, Mingli Xu

Faculty Publications

Correct timing of developmental phase transitions is critical for the survival and fitness of plants. Developmental phase transitions in plants are partially promoted by controlling relevant genes into active or repressive status. Polycomb Repressive Complex1 (PRC1) and PRC2, originally identified in Drosophila, are essential in initiating and/or maintaining genes in repressive status to mediate developmental phase transitions. Our review summarizes mechanisms in which the embryo-to-seedling transition, the juvenile-to-adult transition, and vegetative-to-reproductive transition in plants are mediated by PRC1 and PRC2, and suggests that PRC1 could act either before or after PRC2, or that they could function independently of each other. …

2022 Spring/Summer Newsletter, Plaster Creek Stewards

Newsletters

Highlights:

Staff Transitions

Spring Event

Summer Students

Green Team

Reporting Suspicious Pollutants

Spring & Summer School Partners

Watershed Support Grant #2 Awarded

Macroinvertebrate Study Volunteers Needed

The Effects Of Genotype And Nutrient Conditions On Poplar Growth And Physiology, Bethanie Natalie

Theses - ALL

The United States is currently reliant on other nations for energy and has been unable tomeet goals set for domestic production of 'green' energy such as second generation biofuel. Overcoming these challenges requires examination of transgenic biofuel feedstock plants, specifically in terms of their responses to two nutrient treatments. Here, we investigated the photosynthetic and growth impacts of expressing a hyperthermophilic endoglucanase in planta in a wildtype (WT) Populus alba × grandidentata background under 100% and 15% strength nutrient treatments. This gene was inserted for improvement of the pretreatment process and to limit inputs required during biofuel production. We characterized …

Chemical Constituents And Antimicrobial Evaluation Of Selected Aloe Vera Branded Commercial Products In Tanzania, Stephen S Nyandoro, Bahati F Kyando, Joan Je Munissi

Tanzania Journal of Science

Chemical compositions and antimicrobial activities of twenty-two Aloe vera branded commercial products in Tanzania, a case of marketed soaps, creams, lotions, petroleum jelly, toothpastes and hair conditioner products in Dar es Salaam, were investigated. Chemical compositions were analysed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) whereas antimicrobial activities were evaluated using agar dilution method against four bacteria species, namely Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoneae and Salmonella typhi) and two fungal species Candida albicans and Cryptococcus neoformans. The GC-MS analysis revealed the presence of seven non-polar constituents, namely methyl palmitate, 9-octadecenoic acid methyl ester, methyl stearate, tetratetracontane, hexacosane, and pentacosane and methyl …

Increasing The Resilience Of Plant Immunity To A Warming Climate, Jong Hum Kim, Christian Castroverde, Shuai Huang, Chao Li, Richard Hilleary, Adam Seroka, Reza Sohrabi, Diana Medina-Yerena, Bethany Huot, Jie Wang, Sharon Marr, Mary Wildermuth, Tao Chen, John Macmicking, Sheng Yang He

Biology Faculty Publications

Extreme weather conditions associated with climate change affect many aspects of plant and animal life, including the response to infectious diseases. Production of salicylic acid (SA), a central plant defence hormone, is particularly vulnerable to suppression by short periods of hot weather above the normal plant growth temperature range via an unknown mechanism. Here we show that suppression of SA production in Arabidopsis thaliana at 28 °C is independent of PHYTOCHROME B (phyB) and EARLY FLOWERING 3 (ELF3), which regulate thermo-responsive plant growth and development. Instead, we found that formation of GUANYLATE BINDING PROTEIN-LIKE 3 (GBPL3) defence-activated biomolecular condensates (GDACs) …

Seed Longevity And Climatic Tolerance Of San Joaquin Wooly-Threads (Monolopia Congdonii; Asteraceae) An Endangered Plant From The San Joaquin Desert, California, Paul Excoffier

Master's Theses

San Joaquin wooly-threads (Monolopia congdonii; Asteraceae) is a federally-listed, endangered annual plant species from the desert areas of the San Joaquin Valley. Its limited range puts it at risk of extinction if the climate changes in such a way as to hinder its growth and reproduction. The primary aims of the study were to 1) determine how long-lived the seeds of the M. congdonii are, a key determinant of survival of desert annual plant populations through long droughts and 2) determine how severely hotter, drier conditions impact the ability of emerged plants to grow and reproduce. Secondarily, I …

Genetically Explicit Model May Explain Multigenerational Control Of Emergent Turing Patterns In Hybrid Mimulus, Emily Simmons

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Sodium Mediates Developmentally Plastic Responses In Plants And Herbivores, Luis Santiago-Rosario

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Sodium plays a crucial role in organismal performance, trophic-level interactions, and eco-evolutionary dynamics. For plants, sodium impacts osmoregulation, growth, and water uptake. For animals, sodium is essential influencing osmoregulatory processes, muscle and neural development, and blood regulation. My dissertation aims to disentangle why sodium mismatch affects resource-consumer interactions and its influence on morphological and behavioral plasticity. First, I identified how sodium impacts plant performance and sodium accumulation strategies. I initially focused my research on understanding how increasing substrate sodium affects plant growth and tissue sodium accumulation strategies in controlled settings using a systematic review approach. I found that saltier plants …

Procedures For Genetic Modification Of Miscanthus X Giganteus, A Biomass Crop, Anjali Arpan

Theses and Dissertations

Development of genetic improvement procedures for the bioenergy crop, Miscanthus × giganteus (M×g; triploid), are desired for trait improvement. Agrobacterium tumefaciens has been used in other Miscanthus spp. for genetic improvement, but not in M×g, nor have more than a few genes been introduced at a given time. Transformation procedures for M×g were developed; studies included use of A.tumefaciens (strain LBA4404) and A. rhizogenes (strain A4) for introduction of seven genes isolated (by other researchers) from Sorghum bicolor involved in sorgoleone biosynthesis (an allelopathic compound), and selectable marker gene neomycin phosphotransferase II. Procedural development included generation of …

Investigating The Role Of Small Rna Pathways In Arabidopsis Shoot Gravitropism, Julia Lott

Honors Theses

The plant stem grows against the gravitational force, a phenomenon called negative gravitropism. In the model dicotyledonous plant Arabidopsis thaliana, gravity is sensed by starch-filled amyloplasts, which trigger the shoot gravitropic response through the action of a growth hormone called auxin. In the darkness, a group of transcription factors named PHYTOCHROME-INTERACTING FACTORS (PIFs) promote stem negative gravitropism by inhibiting the starch metabolism in the endodermal amyloplasts. Red light promotes starch metabolism and converts amyloplasts into other types of plastids (e.g., chloroplasts) through the red/far-red light photoreceptors—phytochromes. Consequently, red-light-grown seedlings lose starch granules in amyloplasts and exhibit agravitropic growth. However, the …