This dissertation describes patterns in epiphytic macrolichen community composition along a nitrogen deposition gradient in the Yosemite region of the Sierra Nevada in California. This region is part of the largest federal air quality Class 1 designated air-shed in the western United States, covering the entire crest of the Sierra...
The sagebrush steppe ecosystem of the northern Great Basin is severely degraded and continues to decline due in large part to the invasive, non-native annual grasses Bromus tectorum L. (cheatgrass) and Taeniatherum caput-medusae (L.) Nevski (medusahead). Restoration of invasive-dominated areas is difficult, but can be enhanced by adding a carbon...
Using spatial autocorrelation analysis, we
examined the within-population genetic structure of
Rhizopogon vinicolor and R. vesiculosus, two hypogeous
ectomycorrhizal (EM) species that are sympatric
sister taxa known to differ in their clonal structure.
We collected 121 sporocarps and 482 tuberculate EM
of both species from a 20 ha forest stand...
Four year old vines of 18 varieties were cane pruned, trained to a Scott Henry, thinned before veraison, and harvested in October and November 1993. Two of the varieties, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, were used as standards. Only four varieties were spur pruned to reduce cropping or cluster size: Dolcetto,...
Introduction: Biotic soil crust communities contribute valuable ecosystem services and biodiversity in steppe ecosystems. The uncommon crust lichens Acarospora schleicheri, Fuscopannaria cyanolepra, Rhizocarpon diploschistidina, and Texosporium sancti-jacobi are associated with fine-textured soils along rivers of the Columbia Basin. A. schleicheri and R. diploschistidina indicate late-successional habitat and may serve as...
Background: Next-generation sequencing and 'omics' platforms are used extensively in plant biology research to unravel new genomes and study their interactions with abiotic and biotic agents in the growth environment. Despite the availability of a large and growing number of genomic data sets, there are only limited resources providing highly-curated...
Explaining restoration failure can be as important as touting success. We used a series of studies to understand the failure of techniques commonly used to restore wetland prairies in the Willamette Valley of western Oregon. Burning, fallowing, and solarization (covering tilled plots with plastic sheeting to heat the soil) had...
Plant growth stages are identified as distinct morphological landmarks in a continuous developmental process. The terms
describing these developmental stages record the morphological appearance of the plant at a specific point in its life cycle. The
widely differing morphology of plant species consequently gave rise to heterogeneous vocabularies describing growth...
Seed size, abundance, viability, dormancy, and germination requirements strongly influence plant establishment and therefore are important considerations in restoration of native vegetation. These characteristics provide criteria for selection of suitable species, development of collection and pretreatment methods, and determination of seeding densities. The first set of objectives of this study...
Population size of Clavibacter michiganensis subsp.
sepedonicus in potato cv Russet Burbank and plant response
as affected by drought were assessed in a greenhouse
experiment. Water deficit stress and no stress treatments,
and inoculum densities of 0 or 2 X 10⁷ cfu C. m.
sepedonicus/seed piece were arranged factorially. Stem...
Thiamine pyrophosphate (vitamin B1) is an essential nutrient in the human diet, and is often referred as the energy vitamin. Potato contains modest amounts of thiamine. However, the genetic variation of thiamine concentrations in potato has never been investigated. In this study, we determined thiamine concentrations in freshly-harvested unpeeled tubers...
The improvement of the agricultural and wine-making qualities of the grapevine (Vitis vinifera) is hampered by adherence to traditional varieties, the recalcitrance of this plant to genetic modifications, and public resistance to genetically modified organism (GMO) technologies. To address these challenges, we developed an RNA virus-based vector for the introduction...
Phytophthora pini Leonian, recently re-established from P. citricola
I, is a pathogen with a wide range of forest and nursery hosts. It causes foliar
infections in horticultural nurseries in Oregon, where recirculating irrigation
systems are common. Increased use of recirculating irrigation systems may
contribute to disease caused by waterborne plant...
Verticillium wilt of hops in Oregon, caused by Verticillium
dahliae Kleb., was first reported in 1956. Later, V. albo-atrum
Reinke & Berth. was also isolated from infected hop plants, and thus
both species of the fungus were shown to be the causal agents of the
disease in Oregon.
The purpose...
We sampled vegetation, bryophytes, lichens, environment, and stand dynamics in 56 plots in the Swan Valley, Montana in 1975-1978. The data include complete inventory of trees in 375 m2 plots, with whole-plot ocular estimates of plant cover by species, transect sampling of the ground layer bryophytes and lichens with microplots,...
Faced with landscapes degraded by fire suppression, logging, and grazing, land managers in the interior western US are attempting to restore habitat structure and function. In southwest Oregon, landscape-scale fuels treatments are being implemented with goals including recreating historic vegetation structure, despite poor understanding of the nature of the landscape...
Drought resistance among genotypes of Port-Orford-cedar (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana (A. Murr.) Pan., Cupressaceae) seedlings was evaluated both in the field and in the greenhouse. Field water potentials (Ψ) of 5-year-old seedlings were measured at two high-elevation plantation sites where summer drought occurs. Measurements of Ψ were compared to survival two years...
Pseudomonas syringae is a phylogenetically diverse species of Gram-negative bacterial plant pathogens responsible for crop diseases around the world. The HrpL sigma factor drives expression of the major P. syringae virulence regulon. HrpL controls expression of the genes encoding the structural and functional components of the type III secretion system...
Increased temperatures due to anthropogenic-induced climate change may raise the threat of extinction for taxa with sessile life histories (e.g., plants) in the near future. Linking climate change models to demographic models may provide useful insights into the potential effects of environmental changes on rare plants, and therefore aid in...
Uncertainties in the age and phylogenetic position of Pinaceae fossils present significant obstacles to our understanding of the timing of diversification in the family. We demonstrate that simultaneous phylogenetic analyses of chloroplastDNA(matK and rbcL) and nonmolecular characters that include both extant genera and a limited number of fossil taxa provide...
Antibiotics are essential for control of bacterial diseases of plants, especially fire blight of pear and apple and bacterial spot of peach. Streptomycin is used in several countries; the use of oxytetracycline, oxolinic acid and gentamicin is limited to only a few countries. Springtime antibiotic sprays suppress pathogen growth on...
Background: Recent mapping of eukaryotic transcriptomes and spliceomes using massively parallel RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) has revealed that the extent of alternative splicing has been considerably underestimated. Evidence also suggests that many pre-mRNAs undergo unproductive alternative splicing resulting in incorporation of in-frame premature termination codons (PTCs). The destinies and potential functions...
The order Cornales (dogwoods) is the earliest diverging lineage within the most diverse group of flowering plants, the asterids (>80,000 species). Although molecular phylogenetics have significantly improved our understanding of cornalean systematics, early phylogenetic relationships remain uncertain due to an initial rapid radiation. The fossil record of Cornales is extensive...
This thesis examines factors limiting understory herb presence and flowering in young second-growth Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) forests on the west side of the Cascade Mountains, Oregon, USA. I studied the belowground effects of canopy trees on understory herbs and shrubs in old-growth forests using trenched plots from which tree roots...
Podosphaera macularis causes one of the most important diseases, powdery mildew, of Humulus lupulus (hop). If left unmanaged, hop powdery mildew can cause total crop loss due to disease or browning of hop cones rendering the cones unmarketable to buyers. The Hop Powdery Mildew Infection Risk Index (HOPS) is heavily...
Host-parasite interactions between the pathogen, Sphaerulina musiva, and its host, Populus spp., were examined in a series of studies. In the first study, variation in resistance of Populus nigra from 7 locations in Europe was differentiated based on the parameters cankers per cm and disease severity score. The analysis evaluated...
To determine which isolates will most rapidly replace
Phellinus weirii in stumps and roots, Trichoderma spp. were
isolated from P. weirii-infested stumps and roots, identified, and
examined for growth rates and lethal effects on P. weirii in vitro.
Phellinus weirii-infested Douglas-fir stumps and stump roots
were sampled for microorganisms by...
The main objective of this thesis was to determine the influence of tree vigor on susceptibility to Armillaria root disease. First, the effect of thinning, fertilizing and pruning on tree vigor of four young Douglas-fir (Pseudo tsuga menziesii var. menziesi,) plantations was explored. Tree vigor was calculated by measuring wood...
A saprozoic nematode, Diplogaster lheriteiri Maupas 1919,
was studied to determine its relationship to the plant pathogenic bacteria,
Agrobacterium tumefaciens (Smith and Townsend) Conn.,
Erwinia amylovora (Burrill) Winslow et al., Erwinia carotovora
(Jones) Holland, Pseudomonas phaseolicola (Burk. ) Dows.,
Xanthomonas campestris (Pam. ) Dows. and to a phage of A....
Raspberry latent virus (RpLV) is a newly characterized reovirus found in commercial raspberry fields in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Thus far, all members of the plant reoviruses are transmitted in a replicative, persistent manner by several species of leafhoppers or planthoppers. After several failed attempts to transmit RpLV using leafhoppers,...
The Feldmannia sp. virus is a large icosahedral virus that persistently infects
marine brown alga Feldmannia sp.. So far, there is no information available about
viral genome replication, gene structure and gene expression in this unique viral-host
system. The purpose of this study was to characterize the general features of...
Questions: Are traits related to the performance of plant species in restoration? Are the relationships between traits and performance consistent across the functional groups of annual forbs, perennial forbs, and grasses? Do the relationships between traits and performance depend on neighboring functional groups? Location: A former agricultural field, being restored...
Null networks are a type of random graph that is favored for the analysis of a wide variety of real-world networks, including gene-regulatory networks, food webs, and species co-occurrence matrices. As a hypothesis-generating tool, null networks are invaluable because they can reveal network motifs and unusual large-scale properties of networks...
Pseudomonas is a diverse genus of Gram-negative bacteria that includes pathogens of plants, insects, and humans as well as environmental strains with no known pathogenicity. Pseudomonas fluorescens itself encompasses a heterologous group of bacteria that are prevalent in soil and on foliar and root surfaces of plants. Some strains of...
Thiamine diphosphate (vitamin B1) plays a fundamental role as an enzymatic cofactor in universal metabolic pathways including glycolysis, the pentose phosphate pathway, and the tricarboxylic acid cycle. In addition, thiamine diphosphate has recently been shown to have functions other than as a cofactor in response to abiotic and biotic stress...
Thiamin is essential for human health. While plants are the ultimate source of thiamin in most human diets, staple foods like white rice have low thiamin content. Therefore, populations whose diets are mainly based on low-thiamin staple crops suffer from thiamin deficiency. Biofortification of rice grain by engineering the thiamin...
The Willamette Valley (Oregon) Prairie Plant Trait Dataset is a compilation of plant traits of species important in upland prairies, wetland prairies, vernal pools, and emergent wetlands, and in the restoration of prairies and wetlands of the Willamette Valley of Oregon. These species are also found widely throughout the Pacific...
This study describes the soils, vegetation and age structure
of the Pinus contorta forests of Crater Lake National Park. Growth
rates of P. contorta, and levels of infection and impact of dwarf
mistletoe (Arceuthobium americanu1r) on growth of P. contorta
individuals are compared among communities.
Vegetation description is based on...
Recent investigations indicate that several latent viruses of
apples exist in common commercial apple stocks, but these viruses
and their relationships are incompletely understood. This thesis
describes investigations of crab apples as indicators of latent viruses
of apples.
Eighty-eight varieties and species of crab apples were tested
as indicators of...
Disease predictive systems are intended to be management aids. With a few exceptions, these systems typically do not have direct sustained use by growers. Rather, their impact is mostly pedagogic and indirect, improving recommendations from farm advisers and shaping management concepts. The degree to which a system is consulted depends...
The objectives of this study are to: 1) study the variations
among stands of old-growth Sitka spruce forest located within a relatively
restricted geographical area, 2) determine the relationship between
species distribution, vegetational pattern, and such site factors
as slope and aspect, and 3) ascertain the abruptness of phytosociological
change...
Large organic debris has important biological and physical
roles within the stream ecosystem. In order to determine the source
area of large organic debris in streams, thirty-nine streams in the
Cascade and Coast Ranges of Oregon and Washington were sampled. The
distance from point-of-origin to channel was measured for thirty...