Treesearch

Wood-decay fungi soften wood, putatively providing opportunities for woodpeckers to excavate an otherwise hard substrate, yet the fungal community composition in tree cavities and the specificity of these relationships is largely unknown. We used high-throughput amplicon sequencing of the fungal ITS2 region to examine the fungal communities associated with acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) and their cavities in mature valley oak (Quercus lobata) and blue oak (Q. douglasii) trees in an oak savannah of central coastal California, USA. Acorn woodpeckers and their excavations...

For agricultural areas facing water scarcity, sustainable water use policy relies on irrigation information that is timely and at a high resolution, but existing publicly available water use data are often insufficient for monitoring compliance or understanding the influence of policy on individual farmer decisions. This study attempts to fill this data gap by using remote sensing to map annual irrigation quantity at the field-scale within the central Ogallala aquifer region of the United States. We compiled in situ annual irrigation volume data at the field scale in the Republican River...

Wetlands around the globe are being impacted by changing temperature and precipitation patterns. Simultaneously black ash forested wetlands are expected to lose much of their overstory canopy due to the invasive Emerald Ash Borer (EAB). Field experiments and modeling efforts have provided information on species tolerance of post-EAB conditions and future climate adapted species. No studies have yet examined the interaction of the loss of ash and future climate scenarios on wetland hydrologic conditions. We developed daily wetland hydrology models for three vegetation conditions: black ash...

In 1990, the major destinations for hardwood logs exported by the United Sates were Europe, Canada, and three East Asian markets: Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. From 1990 to 2005, the volume of hardwood logs exported to Canada increased by 402 percent. During this period, another East Asian log market developed, consisting of China, Hong Kong, and Vietnam (CHV). While increased Canadian exports were an apparent result of increased U.S. bilateral trade with Canada, the development of the CHV market was associated with increased U.S. furniture imports from that region. The volume of U.S. log...

In light of concerns about the future of northern white-cedar, it is important to fully understand its current distribution and abundance, evaluate its ecological and social importance, and develop a strategy for conservation and sustainable use. In the previous chapter, we discussed the range of northern white-cedar and how that has changed and will continue to change over time. But knowing the extent of northern white-cedar's range and whether it is expanding or contracting isn’t enough to understand what is happening to the species. We must also know why these changes are occurring, and...

Lymantria dispar L. is a serious invasive defoliator of broadleaf trees in both North America and Eurasia. When rearing L. dispar for research, the artificial diet must have a source of iron that is bioavailable and in the quantity needed to ensure normal development and survival. The standard iron supplement in L. dispar diet, amorphous ferric phosphate, is no longer commercially available, which motivated studies on alternative iron sources and concentrations. The responses of three L. dispar populations (including an L. dispar asiatica Vnukovskij population) to seven different iron...

Sieve elements of many angiosperms contain structural phloem proteins (P-proteins) that can interact to create large P-protein bodies. P-protein bodies can occlude sieve plates upon injury but the range of functional and physiological roles of P-proteins remains uncertain, in part because of challenges in labeling and visualization methods. Here, we show that a reciprocal oligosaccharide probe, OGA488, can be used in rapid and sensitive labeling of P-protein bodies in Arabidopsis, poplar, snap bean and cucumber in histological sections. OGA488labeling of knockouts of the two Arabidopsis...

Thinning and prescribed fire are often used to promote oak recruitment into the canopy; however, little is known about the longevity of resprouting oak seedlings and how age affects growth response to these treatments. We investigated this by excavating 180 chinkapin oak seedlings (Quercus muehlenbergii) from an eastern Kansas upland hardwood forest study area divided into different combinations of burning and thinning treatments: control, burn only, burn and thin to 7 m2/ha, burn and thin to 14 m2/ha, thin to 7 m2/ha, and thin to 14 m2/ha. In each treatment, approximately three years...

Aim: What factors may affect species range sizes remains a central question in ecologyand biogeography. Particularly, whether and how species richness may regulateaverage species range size remains largely elusive. Here, we explore the relationshipbetween species diversity and species range size at a global extent and discuss itsimplications and significance for ecology and management.Location: Worldwide. Taxon: Plants and various groups of animals.Methods: We used published data on plant richness and range size from around theworld and synthesized related literature to assess the richness–...

A system of nonlinear biomass component equations was developed for slash pine (Pinus elliottii Engelm. var. elliottii) trees using an econometric approach in which endogenous right-hand-side variables were included in some equations. The system was fitted to component biomass data from 306 slash pine trees sampled in the southeastern United States with weighted two-stage (2SLS) and three-stage (3SLS) least squares and full information maximum-likelihood (FIML) estimation methods. The predictive performances of the system fitted with these three estimation methods were ranked based on an...