Understanding global warming effects on forest ecosystems will help policy-makers and forest managers design forest management and biodiversity conservation strategies. We examined the change in woody plant structural diversity in response to topography-associated thermal gradients in a subtropical forest with diverse abundance patterns. We found that energy distribution in a warming trend acro...

2 Forest Advisor, University of California, Cooperative Extension, Eureka, California Abstract: Data on riparian community composition and environmental conditions were collected on over 20 streams in the Sierra Nevada as part of hydropower licensing studies. Over 1,000 samples were analyzed using two-way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN), to determine riparian dominance types. Ordination t...

The problem of measuring the objective refractive error with an aberrometer has shown to be more elusive than expected. Here, the formalism of differential geometry is applied to develop a theoretical framework of refractive error sensing. At each point of the pupil, the local refractive error is given by the wavefront curvature, which is a 2 × 2 symmetric matrix, whose elements are directly re...

We present an improved microfluidic design for generating spatial and temporal gradients. The basic functional elements are bifurcated and trifurcated channels used to split flow between two and three channels, respectively. We use bifurcated channels on the exterior of the channel manifold and trifurcated channels in the interior with mixing tees to recombine flows. For N gradient-forming leve...

BACKGROUND Continental slopes are among the steepest environmental gradients on earth. However, they still lack finer quantification and characterisation of their faunal diversity patterns for many parts of the world. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Changes in fish community structure and diversity along a depth gradient from 50 to 1200 m were studied from replicated stereo baited remote under...

Ecosystem energy is now recognized as a primary correlate and potential driver of global patterns of species richness. The increasingly well-tested species-energy relationship is now ripe for application to conservation, and recent advances in satellite technology make this more feasible. While the correlates for the species-energy relationship have been addressed many times previously, this st...

While there have been a vast number of studies on bacterial alpha diversity in the shallow terrestrial subsurface, beta diversity - how the bacterial community composition changes with spatial distance - has received surprisingly limited attention. Here, bacterial beta diversity and its controlling factors are investigated by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and cloning of samples from a...

Thick carbonate rocks were developed in the depression of the Tarim craton during the Cambrian-Middle Ordovician periods. The compressional tectonic movement during the Middle Caledonian-Hercynian created the paleouplifts, which became the base for the paleokarst in the Ordovician carbonate rocks. Based on the large quantity of seismic, drilling, and geological outcrop data, this study analyzed...

Highly efficient accumulation of trace metals is often reported in ants, but their metal regulation strategies are poorly understood. This study examined the relationships between Zn and Cd total (tot) and water soluble (ws) concentrations in soil and in workers of three ant species collected along a metal-pollution gradient: Formica cunicularia, Lasius flavus and Myrmica rubra. Regression line...