OF THE THESIS The Effects of Predators and Habitat on Sea Urchin Density and Behavior in Southern California Kelp Forests by Kathryn D. Nichols Master of Science in Biology San Diego State University, 2009 It is well documented that sea urchins can have vast impacts on kelp forest community structure as a result of kelp grazing. Despite the ecological importance of sea urchins, direct field stu...

Myanmar offers unique opportunities for both biodiversity conservation and foreign direct investment due to projected economic growth linked to natural resource exploitation. Industrial-scale development introduces new land uses into the landscape, with unknown repercussions for local communities and biodiversity conservation. We use participatory mapping of 31 communities, focus groups in 28 c...

This study examines struggles to bring people back into protected forests to enhance sustainable forest management and livelihoods using insights emerging from a co-management project in Malawi. It uses mixed social science methods and a process-based conceptualization of co-management to analyze experiences, and theory of reciprocal altruism to explain major findings of continuing local forest...

Key points • Regions where community forest enterprises dominate the landscape have low to non-existent deforestation, sustainable forest management, enhancement of carbon stocks, forest conservation and substantial generation of sustainable livelihoods. Corruption and deforestation are also associated with some Mexican forest communities, but these regions have created a sector with hundreds o...

The Agaricomycotina are a phylogenetically diverse group of fungi that includes both saprotrophic and mycorrhizal species, and that form species--rich communities in forest ecosystems. Most species are infrequently observed, and this hampers assessment of the role that environmental heterogeneity plays in determining local community composition and in driving beta-diversity. We used a combinati...

Tropical forest reserves have conservation value for terrestrial mammals and are threatened by anthropogenic pressures, especially conversion to other land-use types. To assess mammalian biodiversity of in Sabah, Borneo, we used camera trapping data estimate species richness, beta diversity, phylogenetic functional diversity nine with different management classifications backgrounds. Multiregio...

Urbanization and exotic species are major threats to the conservation of forest-dependent wildlife species. Some emblematic species, indicators of habitat quality for the conservation of other species, might successfully be reintroduced within cities when habitat restoration and pest management programs are combined. We studied the landscape resource selection of juvenile kaka Nestor meridional...