Conservation banking is a market-based instrument and conservation tool designed to provide compensatory mitigation for impacts to endangered species. These banks provide both ecological and economic benefits, however their ability to continue providing these benefits is threatened by climate change. The motivational factors behind the decisions to establish a conservation...
All animals have developed the critical ability to detect, respond to, and detoxify a large array of environmental chemicals and stressors that can cause adverse health effects. Important examples of landmark contaminants around the world are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxins, both of which can act via the aryl...
An increased understanding of secondary metabolism in fungi is important for both biological and societal reasons. The ascomycete genus, Tolypocladium, is an ideal system to explore secondary metabolism characterization, ecology, evolution and regulation. The genus produces and has the genomic potential to produce a wide array of metabolites. Paired with...
The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) is a ligand activated transcription factor that is a member of the basic helix-loop-helix PER-ARNT-SIM (bHLH/PAS) protein family of cellular sensors. The AHR is conserved across multiple animal phyla and is required for proper vertebrate development. A structurally diverse group of chemicals, including polycyclic aromatic...
Mathematical modeling plays a pivotal role in understanding the mechanism of radiation-induced cellular effects, and also in quantifying the radiation risk to the cell. However, there are still compelling challenges facing the conventional modeling in radiobiology, such as lacking a generalized theory structure of quantifying target effect and non-target effect...
Rhizopogon is a large genus of ectomycorrhizal (EM) fungi that grows in association with host trees of the family Pinaceae. We have conducted a series of studies investigating the ecology and evolutionary biology of the EM symbiosis shared between R. subgenus Villosuli and trees of the genus Pseudotsuga. Two members...
Cyanobacterial harmful algae blooms (cyanoHABs) are a growing concern worldwide due to damage of ecosystems and threats to human health. Previous research indicates that plant humics from aquatic and wetland vascular plants are effective inhibitors of cyanobacterial metabolism and growth and may be useful as control agents for mitigating cyanoHABs....
At first glance, Edgar Rice Burroughs's wildly popular romantic fantasy novel, Tarzan of the Apes (1912), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist science fiction-utopian novel, Herland (1915), with its dystopian companion, With Her in Ourland (1916), may appear to have little in common. Tarzan celebrates the human connection with wild nature...