Tall fescue is thought to have co-evolved with the fungal endophyte Acremonium coenophialum to form a mutualistic relationship. Endophyte-infected (EI) plants can have increased growth and survival when compared with endophyte-free (EF) plants. Responses to endophyte-infection vary and are host-genotype and fungal-biotype specific. Mechanism(s) by which endophyte-infection confers increased growth...
Knowledge of post-dispersal seed fates and other regeneration characteristics is
crucial for predicting abundances and distributions of populations and, ultimately,
community species composition and diversity. Seed fate studies, however, are rare
primarily due to the difficulty of determining seed fates and causes of mortality.
This thesis investigated post-dispersal seed fates...
Many species have complex life cycles in which a dispersive larval stage is
followed by a relatively sedentary adult stage. For such species, reproductive output
is often high and large variation in survivorship throughout early life-history phases
(eggs and larvae) can lead to dramatic fluctuations in recruitment which may in...
The first part of the dissertation is to evaluate the use of proposed and established equations for area under the plasma concentration versus time (AUC) for molecules undergoing nonlinear Michaelis–Menten pharmacokinetic elimination. The effects of varying Michaelis-Menten parameters, rate of drug absorption, or bioavailability on the predictability of drug exposure...
Acid whey is the largest byproduct of the dairy industry but to date has few useful applications and is frequently discarded as a result. However, acid whey has a high carbon content, making it a suitable co-substrate for anaerobic co-digestion with raw sewage sludge. The synergistic effect of co-digestion has...
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Mark E. Dolan, Committee Member, representing Chemical, Biological, and Environmental
The epistemic practices that make up engineering are poorly understood and there is a lack of empirical research on this topic. Characterizing the epistemic practices of engineering students, faculty, and professionals is critical to creating effective curriculum that aids in developing student’s epistemic practices. Doing so allows us to better...
Malolactic fermentation (MLF) is important in the production of wines as it reduces acidity through the conversion of malic acid to lactic acid. However, successful MLF can be difficult to achieve due to yeast antagonism of the bacterium responsible for
the secondary fermentation, Oenococcus oeni. In particular, yeast produced sulfur...
The size, shape, and stability of a species’ dietary niche can both influence and reflect a variety of biological patterns, including species interactions, extinction risk, and ecosystem function. This is particularly apparent when dietary changes manifest at ecosystem and clade scales to profoundly affect macroecological and macroevolutionary trajectories. However, many...
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the production of poplar biomass grown under four management conditions in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the U.S.A. was conducted. While the extraction of fossil fuels and the subsequent generation of energy have environmental impacts, the alternative of extracting poplar biomass also has impacts...
Microbial natural products represent a massive repository of unique chemical scaffolds with corresponding diverse biological functions. However, in the past decade the development of natural products into new therapeutics has dwindled, in part due to the challenges posed by high rediscovery rates and low throughput associated with classical bioassay-guided fractionation...
