| 1. |
- Östman, Örjan, et al.
(författare)
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Habitat area affects arthropod communities directly and indirectly through top predators
- 2007
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Ingår i: Ecography. - 0906-7590 .- 1600-0587. ; 30:3, s. 359-366
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Both habitat area and predators are known to affect the diversity and composition of species that live in a locality. In addition, habitat area can influence the presence of predators, indirectly affecting the diversity of prey. Thus, habitat area may influence species diversity directly and indirectly through the presence of top predators. Here we examine the effects of habitat area and predators on the species richness and composition of a foliage living arthropod community in a fragmented complex of glades (small grassland patches within a forested matrix) in the Ozark Plateau, Missouri. We find that a top predator, the eastern collared lizard Crotaphytus collaris collaris, occurs primarily on larger glades. Glade area was positively correlated with arthropod diversity, but only after removing the effect of collared lizard presence. Moreover, collared lizards reduced overall arthropod richness, and shifted the dominance from predatory arthropods (e.g. spiders) and Orthopteran grasshoppers to Homopterans (planthoppers). This study shows the importance of accounting for variation in the presence of a top predator when studying the effect of landscape-level processes on species richness and composition.
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| 2. |
- Ford, Caroline S., et al.
(författare)
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Selection of candidate coding DNA barcoding regions for use on land plants
- 2009
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Ingår i: Botanical journal of the Linnean Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0024-4074 .- 1095-8339. ; 159:1, s. 1-11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- An in silico screen of 41 of the 81 coding regions of the Nicotiana plastid genome generated a shortlist of 12 candidates as DNA barcoding loci for land plants. These loci were evaluated for amplification and sequence variation against a reference set of 98 land plant taxa. The deployment of multiple primers and a modified multiplexed tandem polymerase chain reaction yielded 85-94% amplification across taxa, and mean sequence differences between sister taxa of 6.1 from 156 bases of accD to 22 from 493 bases of matK. We conclude that loci should be combined for effective diagnosis, and recommend further investigation of the following six loci: matK, rpoB, rpoC1, ndhJ, ycf5 and accD.
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| 3. |
- Forest, F., et al.
(författare)
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The role of biotic and abiotic factors in evolution of ant dispersal in the milkwort family (Polygalaceae)
- 2007
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Ingår i: Evolution. - : Wiley. - 0014-3820 .- 1558-5646. ; 61:7, s. 1675-1694
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A phylogenetic approach was taken to investigate the evolutionary history of seed appendages in the plant family Polygalaceae (Fabales) and determine which factors might be associated with evolution of elaiosomes through comparisons to abiotic (climate) and biotic (ant species number and abundance) timelines. Molecular datasets from three plastid regions representing 160 species were used to reconstruct a phylogenetic tree of the order Fabales, focusing on Polygalaceae. Bayesian dating methods were used to estimate the age of the appearance of ant-dispersed elaiosomes in Polygalaceae, shown by likelihood optimizations to have a single origin in the family. Topology-based tests indicated a diversification rate shift associated with appearance of caruncular elaiosomes. We show that evolution of the caruncular elaiosome type currently associated with ant dispersal occurred 54.0-50.5 million year ago. This is long after an estimated increase in ant lineages in the Late Cretaceous based on molecular studies, but broadly concomitant with increasing global temperatures culminating in the Late Paleocene-Early Eocene thermal maxima. These results suggest that although most major ant clades were present when elaiosomes appeared, the environmental significance of elaiosomes may have been an important factor in success of elaiosome-bearing lineages. Ecological abundance of ants is perhaps more important than lineage numbers in determining significance of ant dispersal. Thus, our observation that elaiosomes predate increased ecological abundance of ants inferred from amber deposits could be indicative of an initial abiotic environmental function.
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