Woody debris can be a valuable resource for stream macroinvertebrates both directly and indirectly as a source of food or substrate. We review the literature on woody debris-macroinvertebrate interactions in three ecoregions in the Southeastern U.S. Studies on streams in the Coastal Plain ecoregion, which tend to be sandy or muddy, indicate that woody debris is valuable as substrate. Studies on...

Article history: Received 10 October 2006 Received in revised form 9 May 2007 Accepted 9 May 2007 Biodiversity and ecosystem data are both geo-referenced and “species-referenced”. Ecoregion classification systems are relevant to basic ecological research and have been increasingly used for making policy and management decisions. There are practical needs to integrate taxonomic data with ecoregi...

The scale of investigation for disturbance-influenced processes plays a critical role in theoretical assumptions about stability, variance, and equilibrium, as well as conservation reserve and long-term monitoring program design. Critical consideration of scale is required for robust planning designs, especially when anticipating future disturbances whose exact locations are unknown. This resea...

BACKGROUND Disturbance is a key influence on forest carbon dynamics, but the complexity of spatial and temporal patterns in forest disturbance makes it difficult to quantify their impacts on carbon flux over broad spatial domains. Here we used a time series of Landsat remote sensing images and a climate-driven carbon cycle process model to evaluate carbon fluxes at the ecoregion scale in wester...

This article summarizes the rationale I used in identifying ecoregion boundaries on maps of the United States, North America, and the world's continents, published from 1976 to 1998. The geographic reasoning used in drawing boundaries involves 20 principles, which are presented to stimulate discussion and further understanding. Brief background and references are provided for the principles.

Aulonocephalus pennula is a nematode living in the caeca of the wild Northern bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) present throughout the Rolling Plains Ecoregion of Texas. The cytochrome oxidase 1 (COX 1) gene of the mitochondrial genome was used to screen A. pennula in wild quail. Through BLAST analysis, similarity of A. pennula to other nematode parasites was compared at the nucleotide level...

Aims We present the first global map of vascular plant species richness by ecoregion and compare these results with the published literature on global priorities for plant conservation. In so doing, we assess the state of floristic knowledge across ecoregions as described in floras, checklists, and other published documents and pinpoint geographical gaps in our understanding of the global vascu...

Debilitating ocular diseases are often reported in avian species. By and large, helminth parasites have been overlooked in avian diseases and regarded as inconsequential. The decline of Northern bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) in the Rolling Plains ecoregion of Texas has prompted an investigation of the factors influencing their disappearance. Infection by the eyeworm (Oxyspirura petrowi) ...