A wide variety of organisms show morphologically plastic responses to environmental
stressors but in general these changes are not reversible. Though less common, reversible
morphological structures are shown by a range of species in response to changes in predators,
competitors, or food. Theoretical analysis indicates that reversible plasticity increases fitness...
Species invasions have a range of negative effects on recipient ecosystems, and many occur at a scale and magnitude that preclude complete eradication. When complete extirpation is unlikely with available management resources, an effective strategy may be to suppress invasive populations below levels predicted to cause undesirable ecological change. We...
The Pacific red lionfish has recently invaded Western Atlantic and Caribbean coral reefs, and may become one of the most ecologically harmful marine fish introductions to date. Lionfish possess a broad suite of traits that makes them particularly successful invaders and strong negative interactors with native fauna, including defensive venomous...
What do you say when you have only a minute to explain to a municipal official why keeping track of the number of bird species found in a park may help make decisions about park management? Talk of significant differences among treatments or testing theory will likely meet with glazed...
The proliferation of efficient fishing practices has promoted the depletion of
commercial stocks around the world and caused significant collateral damage to marine
habitats. Recent empirical studies have shown that marine reserves can play an important role
in reversing these effects. Equilibrium metapopulation models predict that networks of marine
reserves...
For the past several decades, amphibian populations have been decreasing
around the globe at an unprecedented rate. Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), the fungal
pathogen that causes chytridiomycosis in amphibians, is contributing to amphibian declines.
Natural and anthropogenic environmental factors are hypothesized to contribute to these
declines by reducing the immunocompetence of...
Alarista succina gen. et sp. nov. (Poaceae) is described from a single floret preserved in amber of Tertiary age originating from the Dominican Republic. The new genus is characterized by 1) a narrow winged lemma awn, 2) numerous (as many as 17) lemma nerves, 3) a lengthy rachilla internode (implying...
The Myristicaceae is a member of the early diverging angiosperm order Magnoliales, however the family is poorly represented by fossil collections. We describe Virola dominicana sp. nov. (Myristicaceae), the first record of fossilized Myristicaceae flowers, from mid-Tertiary (45-15 mya) Dominican amber. The description is based on 24 male flowers in...
The intermittent upwelling hypothesis (IUH) predicts that the strength of
ecological subsidies, organismal growth responses, and species interactions will vary
unimodally along a gradient of upwelling from persistent downwelling to persistent upwelling,
with maximal levels at an intermediate or ‘‘intermittent’’ state of upwelling. To test this model,
we employed the...
Motivation: The goal of any parentage analysis is to identify as many parent-offspring relationships as possible, while minimizing incorrect assignments. Existing methods can achieve these ends, but require additional information in the form of demographic data, thousands of markers, and/or estimates of genotyping error rates. For many non-model systems, it...