The western United States has experienced large-scale degradation due to land use and land cover changes, invasion of annual grasses, and expansion of woody plants into grass and shrublands and the resultant altered fire regimes. These landscape-scale changes have coincided with declining mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) populations, making habitat loss...
Energetic resources transferred between distinct habitats or ecosystems, referred to as allochthonous resources, can greatly subsidize consumers in the recipient habitat, and thus influence food web structure and dynamics. Such subsidies may allow the growth of the consumer population to be decoupled from in situ productivity with effects on consumer...
Combustion emissions produced from burning real transportation fuels have many environmental impacts. However, detailed chemistry across multiple phases, time scales, and thermodynamic conditions make predicting combustion emissions challenging. Detailed modeling of the gas phase alone is prohibitively expensive, due to the large size and stiffness of the kinetic models. The...
North American bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) have experienced significant declines and population extirpations due to novel pathogens such as Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae. This disease continues to limit the population restoration of bighorn sheep. Therefore, understanding the demographic consequences of pathogen presence and the risk of contact between bighorn populations and potential...
In the western United States, bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) have suffered major die-offs in every state since the mid-1800s, and disease from domestic sheep (Ovis aries) has been a primary factor in these events. Beginning in the early 1900s, poly-factorial, poly-microbial pneumonia was identified as a major disease affecting bighorn...
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Here the diversity and phylogeny of the genus, Sthereus Motschulsky, 1845, and its nearest associates in the large subfamily Molytinae are explored through molecular and morphological characters. Sanger sequencing of five genes determined that Sthereus is not monophyletic. Instead, the one species in the genus Gastrotaphrus Buchanan 1936, G. barberi...
Wildfire management networks allow for collaborative intervention in mitigating the ever-present risk of major wildfire events. This thesis consists of two manuscripts that explore the topology and characteristics of wildfire management networks and their ability to influence wildfire severity in social-ecological systems. The first manuscript focuses on the characteristics of...
Bees play a crucial role in pollinating crops, supporting biodiversity, and maintaining ecosystem health. Despite their importance, the decline in bee populations has become a global concern due to various factors including habitat loss, urbanization, and climate change. The purpose of this thesis is to write an article that highlights...
Carnivores have disproportionate effects in ecological systems but understanding their exact influences on ecosystems is a matter of great complexity and debate. Predators directly impact prey by killing them, and indirectly by modifying their behavior in response to predation risk. Yet how species interact, both among members of a carnivore...
Effective communication between patients and health care providers is a critical component in health care because it increases the potential for positive health outcomes. Patient-provider communication and quality health-related information are associated with health care decision-making. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationships between perceived patient-provider communication...