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University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

School of Biological Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Population Biology

The Joint Effect Of Phenotypic Variation And Temperature On Predator-Prey Interactions, Jean P. Gibert May 2016

The Joint Effect Of Phenotypic Variation And Temperature On Predator-Prey Interactions, Jean P. Gibert

School of Biological Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Understanding the factors underpinning to food web structure and stability is a long-standing issue in ecology. This is particularly important in a context of global climate change, where rising environmental temperatures may impact the way species interact, potentially leading to changes in food web structure and to secondary extinctions resulting from cascading effects. In order to understand and predict these changes, we need to hone our comprehension on the way predators and their prey interact. Recent studies suggest that, in order to do so, we need to focus on the traits controlling those interactions, such as body size. Mean body …


Time, Temperature And Species Interactions In A Duckweed-Herbivore Mesocosm, Ian Waterman Nov 2010

Time, Temperature And Species Interactions In A Duckweed-Herbivore Mesocosm, Ian Waterman

School of Biological Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Species interactions within a community are impacted by a variety of abiotic factors. Temperature is known to alter population dynamics such that direct and indirect interactions between populations within a community are affected. Here I investigate the effect of temperature change on species interactions within a duckweed-herbivore mesocosm. Multiple communities were constructed, from a single population of duckweed, to two populations of duckweed consumed by aphids. In the one-predator two-prey web we predicted mutually positive indirect effects between duckweed populations during the first generation of growth. As aphid populations respond numerically to more abundant prey, mutually negative and asymmetric indirect …