Biological invasions are the second largest threat to biodiversity following habitat loss, and studying invasions has been a focus of ecological the past two decades. Despite the intense research, many basic questions remain empirically unanswered, particularly in the realm of behavior. The purpose of this research was to explore the...
Pollination is an essential ecosystem service that sustains functioning ecosystems and aids in food production. In response to recent, widespread declines of managed and native bee populations, many land managers have shown interest in developing conservation and restoration plans for enhancing native bee habitat. However, there is a lack of...
The energy transition in Oregon poses challenges and offers opportunities to rural areas that tend to be targeted for large-scale renewable energy development. The present case study analyzes how the energy transition has taken place in rural Lake County, to answer the question: to what degree has the energy transition...
The Rohingya community have faced continuous violence, discrimination and statelessness in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. In 2017, a violent crackdown by Myanmar’s army on Rohingya Muslims sent almost a million fleeing across the border of Bangladesh. They found their temporary home in the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh...
Increasing renewable energy development is often seen as an essential tool for combating global climate change, yet despite widespread support in theory, renewable energy often faces problems at the implementation stage. In the state of Washington, where voters have expressed a desire for greater renewable energy by mandating that 15%...
The goal of this thesis is to advance the methodology and thought regarding the transferability of ecological estimates of ecosystem services. Conceptually and in practice, ecological estimate transfer parallels economic benefit transfer in ecosystem services research and policy, yet the literature for benefit transfer predates ecological estimate transfer by several...
This thesis describes evaluation of a novel self-sealing chewable sustained release tablet that can maintain controlled release of drug regardless of compaction, crushing, or chewing. The new formulation contains polyethylene oxide which produces a sealant effect for cracks produced in the polymer coating during compaction. Dissolution studies were conducted and...
Our understanding of seasonally disconnected floodplains and how they function to support rearing salmonids in the Pacific Northwest is limited. Past studies have found that these dynamic habitats may provide high-risk, high-reward trade-offs for rearing fish. High prey densities and optimal temperatures allow for accelerated growth, but low water levels...
Competitive exclusion is a key concept in ecology describing the exclusion of one species by another from access to a limited resource. Competitive interactions between chipmunk species in the Great Basin, documented by James Brown in 1970, are often used as a textbook example of competitive exclusion. Whether competitive interactions...
Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) can be used as markers to infer population genetic structure. For Mycoplasma cynos, a pathogen associated with infectious respiratory disease among canines and other animals, SNPs may help to elucidate ecological and evolutionary relationships among the strains that reside in the upper respiratory tract of canines...
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David Hendrix, Committee Member, representing Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics