Pantoea vagans C9-1 (C9-1) is a biological control agent sprayed onto apple and pear trees during bloom for suppression of fire blight, a devastating bacterial disease caused by Erwinia amylovora. Prior bioinformatics studies of C9-1 focused on predicted phenotypes associated with the three native megaplasmids, pPag1, pPag2, and pPag3, and...
Fisheries managers often use models of population density to evaluate the status of stream-living fishes, but many of these models have low predictive performance for abundance and density. These models could incorporate several factors that can limit population density, particularly the effect of body size, envisioned by the theory of...
The anthropogenic introduction of nutrients to water bodies has been shown to alter the structure and function of natural aquatic ecosystems, yet national EPA lake and reservoir nutrient criteria remain too broad for effective regional water quality management. This study uses a reference site approach to propose numeric nutrient criteria...
Falls are a common problem among older adults, including those who are relatively healthy and living independently. Exercise has been recommended as an intervention to reduce falls by slowing and/or reversing age-related declines in balance, strength, and mobility. However, it remains unclear which types or combinations of programs are most...
The overarching premise of this dissertation is to understand how different college and university physical activity education policies affect college and university students. Fundamentally, some American colleges and universities require their students to complete a physical activity education requirement whereas others do not. Given the different policy arrangements of college...
Ecological resources available to freshwater fish shift spatially, temporally and across life stages. To better understand how spatial-temporal availability of resources influence fish, I examined the phenologies of hatching and emergence of Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in streams with contrasting and strongly defined seasonal thermal variability. The study streams included...
This paper examines the influence of species, method, and area on automated
species-area curve created from a systematically sampled data set. Because this is a new
approach to species-area curves, three tests were run to evaluate the performance of the
data sets and accumulation technique. The tests involved 1) range...
Riparian forests provide a myriad of ecosystem functions for adjacent streams and rivers, and due to these linkages, changes in riparian forest conditions can have direct implications for stream ecosystems. Resource managers in the coast redwood forests (Sequoia sempervirens) of northern California (USA) are actively thinning second-growth stands to accelerate...
Hereditary variation is a vital component in the development of new and improved cultivars of landscape plants. Sources of hereditary variation include naturally occurring variation, recombination due to controlled crosses, artificial mutagenesis, and genetic modification via biotechnology. Here I explore all methods with the exception of genetic modification via biotechnology....
This dissertation is informally divided into three major sections. In the first section (Chapter 2) I use data from field mapping, isotopic geochronology, whole rock geochemistry and trace element concentrations in zircons to examine the petrology, geochemistry and ages of the Haquira East porphyry copper deposit of southern Peru. In...