Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
Aspects of global change - specifically, elevated soil nitrogen deposition and warming - are resulting in significant changes in native plant communities. These effects can be direct through changes in productivity, or indirect through...
Animals move through landscapes where their resources are unevenly and often patchily distributed. When animals move and choose among their scattered resources in predictable ways, ecologists may be able to anticipate the spatial...
National recommendations for undergraduate biology education call for orchestrating opportunities for students to "figure out" scientific explanations in the classroom setting by engaging in similar disciplinary practices and discourses...
Species interactions can regulate a population’s density and therefore can act as a selective force on that population. Such evolutionary responses have the potential to feedback and change ecological interactions between species. For...
Fertilization is a complex process, and gamete traits can affect the rate at which sperm and egg collide and fuse, making them prime targets for selection. This is particularly true for broadcast spawners, whose fertilization success...
Sponges are unique filter feeding organisms with complex canal and flagellated chamber aquiferous systems. These systems allow them to specialize in clearing the smallest plankton size class (picoplankton) from the water. Sponges serve...
Density, or the number of individuals per unit area, is known to have substantial effects on individual organisms and on populations. In particular, densities at small spatial scales often affect species interactions, e.g., predation and...
This study examines the evolutionary history of the cosmopolitan beaksedge tribe Rhynchosporeae (ca. 386 spp.; Cyperaceae) using phylogenetics. Taxon sampling covers 25 of the 28 taxonomic sections proposed for the tribe. I compare a...
Among flowering plants, floral form is inherently linked to reproductive success and is therefore a key element in the evolution of angiosperm lineages. Variations in floral form and associated mating systems have demonstrated that...
Ecological systems are dynamic, yet many experimental studies examine plant-herbivore interactions as from a simple, static, or single perspective. Reciprocal interactions can have profound effects on communities, and ignoring such...
The effect of changing anthropogenic mercury emissions on marine wildlife is of broad interest. Methylmercury can cause reproductive and neurological damage and biomagnifies in food webs. Mercury availability in the Pacific Ocean has...
The study of adaptive molecular evolution in natural populations has been severely limited by the difficulty of linking genetic variation to phenotypic variation to fitness effects. Most studies connecting genotype, phenotype, and...
Traits with close ties to fitness are central in understanding the process of adaptation and whether, and in what contexts, selection acts to erode genetically based phenotypic variation. The persistence and even predominance of...
The ecological and evolutionary factors influencing whether hermaphrodites inbreed or outbreed via self-fertilization or outcrossing has long been a theoretical and empirical focus. Recent theory predicts that the conditions favoring the...
Biocrusts have been shown to affect the ecological conditions in a variety of habitats, involving abiotic mechanisms such as soil moisture retention, nitrogen-rich biomass additions, changing soil physical properties, as well as direct...
Mutation is the origin of biological variation but how that variation is expressed and selected depends on the mapping from genetic variation to phenotypic variation, the effect on fitness, and selection. Until recently, there was little...
Modeling Species Distributions of Three Endemic Florida Panhandle Mints under Climate Change: Comparing Plant and Pollinator Distribution Shifts under Future Conditions
Climate change is expected to drive some species to extinction by restricting the range of their suitable habitat or by causing local extinctions of associated organisms necessary to the species' survival and reproduction. However, it is...
Harvester ants of the genus Pogonomyrmex collect and deposit many items on top of their nests. Although these deposits, or depots, may be colossal there is very little known about them. This research is a case study of the depots in the...
Many ecosystems depend on fire to maintain appropriate habitats and to trigger important life history events, such as flowering or seed germination. Historically, fires were often patchy, but due to fire suppression and other human...
This dissertation investigated the evolutionary ecology of a type of obligate mutualism, the form of agriculture found in ants. It presents the results of two laboratory experiments with the fungus-gardening ant species, Trachymyrmex...
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
