Browsing Biology by Title
Now showing items 153-172 of 207
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Reaching for the Stars: Ecology and Skeletal Morphology of Pacific Northwest Sea Stars
Intertidal habitats exist at the interface of land and water, requiring the organisms that live there to inhabit two very different fluids, while also generating webs of interaction that span terrestrial and marine ... -
Reaping the rewards of the big data revolution in ecology
The study of ecology has been irreversibly transformed by the ongoing big data revolution. Technological advancements in data collection and a cultural shift toward data sharing mean that ecological data are more available ... -
Regulation of dendrite growth, placement, and patterning in Drosophila melanogaster class 4 dendrite arborization neurons
The directional flow of information in neurons depends on compartmentalization: dendrites receive inputs whereas axons transmit them. Axons and dendrites likewise contain structurally and functionally distinct subcompartments. ... -
Regulation of life history strategies with individuals in predictable and unpredictable environments
(1996)Animals must adjust their physiology and life histories to conform with changes in the environment. These changes can be fairly predictable, such as the changes in the season, or they can be unpredictable, such as an attack ... -
Reliable and interpretable inference of evolutionary history using Bayesian phylogenetic approaches
Phylogenetic trees are key objects for understanding evolutionary history, first used to describe relationships between groups of species. Phylogenies help us to fill out the tree of life and to describe the dynamics that ... -
Resource allocation to growth and structure: The cost of mussel attachment in a dynamic coastal environment
Specialized mechanical structures produced by organisms provide crucial fitness advantages, but the production of these materials can result in energy allocation trade-offs, affecting population and species distributions. ... -
Restoration of native plant communities: an examination of seed limitation and microsite limitation in the Garry oak ecosystem.
The Garry oak ecosystem is one of the most highly degraded ecosystems in North America due to fragmentation, development, and conversion to incompatible uses, with less than three percent of the ecosystem dominated by ... -
Role of epithelial cells in detection and response to sensory stimuli in Drosophila
Interactions between cell types plays an important role in shaping the morphology and function of those cells. One powerful example is in the peripheral nervous system, where sensory neurons coordinate with epidermal ... -
The role of habitat quality in shaping evolutionary dynamics, population dynamics, and conservation planning
(2001)Understanding ecological and evolutionary consequences of variation in habitat quality is increasingly important as biologists seek to address human-mediated environmental change. I investigated effects of natural temperature ... -
The role of wing mechanosensory feedback in insect flight control
Flying insects rapidly stabilize after perturbations using multiple sensory modalities (e.g., vision mechanoreception, olfaction) for active control. Mechanoreceptors’ direct coupling of sensory structure to the environment, ... -
Roles for callose in plant development and intercellular communication
(2006)Cell-to-cell communication through plasmodesmata (PD) exists between most plant cells. The small fluorescent dye Lucifer Yellow CH (LYCH) has been used to determine that in the Arabidopsis root meristem there are tissues ... -
Roles of the Rho1 small GTPase during development in Drosophila melanogaster
(2004)Rho, Rac and Cdc42 are small GTPases in the Ras superfamily initially shown to regulate the actin cytoskeleton. Subsequent work linked them to many cellular processes. The diversity of functions exhibited by Rho suggests ... -
Scents and Sense Ability: The evolution and role of chemical cues in the pollination and herbivory of Passiflora
Pollination and herbivory play a critical role in both wild ecosystems and agricultural ones, factoring in to their maintenance, evolution, and ecology. Insects, for whom chemical cues are often more important than those ... -
Sea urchin sperm chemotaxis: individual effects and fertilization success
Egg chemoattraction of conspecific sperm mediates fertilization, a critical juncture in reproduction, especially in broadcast-spawning organisms like sea urchins. In the century that sea urchin sperm chemotaxis was studied ... -
Seasonal Circuitry: transcriptional and post-translational regulation of photoperiodic flowering in Arabidopsis thaliana
For plants, the transition towards reproductive development is timed so that it coincides with the most optimal external conditions. For many plant species, day length is an important cue in mediating this process. At the ... -
Seasonal Migration, Gene Flow, and Speciation in North American Birds
Around 20% of bird species migrate annually between distinct breeding and wintering ranges and many sedentary populations shift cyclically within a single range in response to varying climates and food availability. Migration ... -
Sensory ecology, morphology and behavior of Neotropical leaf-nosed bats
Sensory systems perform fitness-relevant functions, and specialized sensory structures and behavior allow organisms to accomplish challenging tasks. Furthermore, echolocation is a highly complex sense, and in function, is ... -
Sex and Fear: Mathematical models of mate choice, parental care, and maladaptive anxiety
In many contexts, animals must infer salient information about another individual indirectly by observing some other characteristic of that individual. In Chapter 1 of this thesis, a model of costly signaling is developed ... -
Shape matters: corolla curvature improves nectary discovery in the hawkmoth Manduca sexta
I measured the effects of variation in corolla curvature and nectary aperture radius on pollinator foraging ability using the hawkmoth Manduca sexta and 3D-printed artificial flowers whose shapes were mathematically ...