Browsing FAS Theses and Dissertations by Keyword "Ecology"
Now showing items 1-20 of 23
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Adaptations to Life on an Oxidizing Planet – insights from the evolutionary ecophysiology of iron-respiring bacteria
(2022-06-06)For more than 1 billion years, life on a young Earth evolved in oceans that were essentially devoid of oxygen (O2) and rich in dissolved, un-oxidized iron (Fe2+). However, with the advent of oxygenic photosynthesis and the ... -
Amazon Forest Response to Changes in Rainfall Regime: Results from an Individual-Based Dynamic Vegetation Model
(2014-02-25)The Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest in the world, and thus plays a major role on global water, energy, and carbon cycles. However, it is still unknown how the Amazon forest will respond to the ongoing changes ... -
Analyzing The Evolution and Diversification of Lepidoptera Using Multi-Spectral Images
(2023-06-01)Insects comprise an estimated 60% of all described species, and butterflies are among the best known of all insect taxa. The order Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) contains approximately 160,000 species in 126 families. ... -
Causes and Consequences of Cooperative Construction in the Mice Mus spicilegus and Peromyscus polionotus
(2013-03-14)The cooperative construction of shared dwellings is a phylogenetically-widespread evolutionary puzzle. Shared shelters are common goods – all individuals in the shelter benefit, at the expense of those individuals that ... -
Character displacement and community assembly in Anolis lizards
(2013-10-08)At broad scales, community ecologists study how biogeographic factors like environmental dissimilarity and geographic distance influence community assembly and composition. At small scales, community ecologists study how ... -
Climate change alters temperate tree and shrub spring phenology and false spring risk
(2021-08-24)Temperate tree and shrub species are at risk of damage from late spring freezing events. Individuals that initiate budburst before the last spring freeze risk leaf tissue loss, damage to the xylem, and slowed, or even ... -
Competition, Character Displacement, and Ecological Release in Anolis lizards
(2021-09-01)The addition or subtraction of species in a community can alter the ecology and evolution of resident species. As human-mediated introductions and extinctions have become commonplace, understanding the consequences of ... -
Ecology and evolution of the African ant acacia, Vachellia drepanolobium, and its multiple symbionts
(2021-05-14)Ant-plants provide food rewards and housing for resident ant colonies, and in exchange, the workers protect their host plant from herbivores and pathogens. The specific outcomes of these symbioses are highly context-dependent, ... -
Ecology and Evolution Within the Oral Microbiome
(2021-07-12)Bacteria inhabit every known ecosystem, from deep-sea hydrothermal vents to plant surfaces. The human body represents one such microbially-dominated ecosystem with the identity and function of human-associated microbiota ... -
The Ecology of a Healthy Home: Energy, Health, and Housing in America, 1960-1985
(2013-03-06)On November 7, 1973, President Nixon asked Americans to lower their home thermostats to a national average temperature of 68 degrees. On February 2, 1974, over half of the gas stations in the New York City area closed after ... -
Energetic Consequences of Thermal and Non-Thermal Food Processing
(2013-03-06)All human societies process their food extensively by thermal and non-thermal means. This feature distinguishes us from other species, and may even be compulsory given that humans are biologically committed to an energy-rich ... -
Fluid Materialisms: Contemporary Art, Posthumanism, and the Ages of Water
(2021-05-18)Fluid Materialisms: Contemporary Art, Posthumanism, and the Ages of Water charts uses and representations of water in post-sixties art in the United States. While discussions of ecology in contemporary art tend to focus ... -
Genomics and Evolutionary Origin of Longhorned Beetles in the Temperate Zone
(2023-06-01)The latitudinal diversity gradient is a prominent pattern in the natural world, wherein species richness decreases from the equator towards the poles. Phytophagous insects are no exception to this rule, and their lower ... -
Host-associated microbial communities as mediators of dietary effects on host health
(2024-01-19)Host-associated microbial communities evolve with their host. They depend on the host for energy substrates and stability and must adapt to host-specific selective pressures. Evidence for how complex communities respond ... -
Hunting-as-Herding: Conversations with Elk, Elk People, and their Joined Social Worlds as a Window into NonHuman Animal Management and Relational Domestication
(2023-05-01)In traditional archaeological paradigms, nonhuman animals are often thought of through the lens of a strict binary, “wild” or “domesticated,” that can be traced to a largely EuroWestern cultural lens. These traditional ... -
Land Cinema in the Neoliberal Age
(2021-07-12)Land Cinema in the Neoliberal Age studies a global corpus of films made in the 1970s and 80s that constitute contributions to Marxist and environmental thought during the rise of neoliberalism. Taking these experimental ... -
Linking bacterial symbiont physiology to the ecology of hydrothermal vent symbioses
(2014-02-25)Symbioses between prokaryotes and eukaryotes are ubiquitous in our biosphere, nevertheless, the effects of such associations on the partners' ecology and evolution are poorly understood. At hydrothermal vents, dominant ... -
A multidimensional perspective on the role of behavior in evolution
(2014-10-23)Behavior determines how organisms interact with their environment, and has long been posited as a pacemaker for evolution. The classical view is that novel behaviors expose organisms to new selective pressures, in turn ... -
Phenological sensitivity as a mediator of plant interactions
(2022-05-04)For temperate plants, spring phenology, or the timing of annual life cycle events such as seed germination, leaf emergence and flowering, is primarily controlled by temperature and light cues. Across a diversity of plant ... -
Phylogeography and Signal Evolution in a Widespread Central American Anole
(2022-05-12)Anolis lizards are an excellent model system in which to study countless evolutionary and ecological questions. I have found great satisfaction in following my many biological interests, from disease dynamics to taxonomy ...