Due to concerns about population declines and habitat destruction, secretive marsh birds (SMBs) are of high conservation concern at state, regional, and national levels. Gaps in research on SMB habitat pose barriers to conservation and wetland restoration efforts.
Restoration managers may select seed from a variety sources for their restoration projects. If the purchased seed is not of the local ecotype, land managers run the risk of poor establishment in the short-term and outcrossing between local and non-local ecotypes, genetic swamping, and the loss of local genetic diversity...
Understanding how root traits vary within and among species, and how they respond to heterogeneous environments, can provide important insight into functional plant attributes that influence plant survival in competitive environments. Selecting plant material with root traits that will support its survival in competitive environments may help improve the outcomes...
The prairie grasses Andropogon gerardii and Sorghastrum nutans have seeds with awns that twist in response to changes in humidity. The humidity-sensitive, or hygroscopic, part of the awn twists, moving the bent, passive portion in an arc. This trait has been demonstrated to improve seedling recruitment in other grass species...
Trees in urban areas offer ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, storm water attenuation, reduction of energy used in buildings and wildlife habitat. Cities invest substantial funds and resources to maintain a healthy urban forest, and much research has been done to improve its resiliency and sustainability. Studies have been done...
Understanding the factors that drive the maintenance of polymorphisms in plant populations has long been of interest to evolutionary biology. Variation in floral traits has often been attributed to selection by pollinators, but recent evidence suggests that other biotic and abiotic agents may also contribute to floral trait differentiation. In...
After large-scale disturbances such as fire, seeding can be necessary to reestablish a plant community and prevent soil erosion. While native plants are ideal for providing ecosystem services and supporting wildlife, currently seeded natives often fail to establish in disturbed landscapes. Further, reseeding with native plants is often hindered by...
We investigated the racial content of perceivers’ mental images of different socioeconomic categories. We selected participants who were either high or low in prejudice toward the poor. These participants saw 400 pairs of visually noisy face images. Depending on condition, participants chose the face that looked like a poor person,...
Metabolic syndrome has become a major public health challenge worldwide. The association between metabolic syndrome and DNA methylation is of great research interest. We constructed a binomial model to investigate the association between a metabolic syndrome index and DNA methylation in the Normative Aging Study. We applied the Iterative Sure...
When making serial predictions in a binary decision task, there is a clear tendency to assume that after a series of the same external outcome (e.g., heads in a coin flip), the next outcome will be the opposing one (e.g., tails), even when the outcomes are independent of one another....