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Climate change is expected to alter patterns of disturbance, which in turn may drive future ecosystem change. This interaction may be particularly important in sub-arctic regions due to rapid climate change and frequent fire. With increased temperatures in northern ecosystems, there is an assumption that typically southern species will shift their distributions northwards. In the northwestern boreal forest, however, the bottleneck to forest establishment is recruitment, which is strongly mediated by reproductive output and disturbance effects. This research focused on the indirect pathway of disturbance-mediated recruitment. The interaction between fire and forest successional processes in sub-arctic stands undergoing...
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Ecologists and conservation biologists alike aim to understand factors determining the abundance and distribution of free-living organisms and to pinpoint why free-ranging animal populations decline. My broad goals were to test ecological hypotheses related to timing of breeding and offspring survival in lesser scaup ( Aythya affinis, hereafter scaup), a boreal-breeding diving duck species and to examine breeding-season explanations for why scaup populations remain below conservation goals. I demonstrated that timing of breeding and clutch size in scaup were remarkably consistent across a broad environmental gradient. Clutch initiation date was unaffected by growing season length (GSL) or latitude and was only marginally...
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Discovery of a new host-parasite relationship, Parelaphostrongylus odocoilei in Dall's sheep (Ovis dalli dalli ) in the Canadian North, prompted the first investigation of the geographic distribution, pathogenesis, ecology and epidemiology of this parasite, as well as the related protostrongylid Protostrongylus stilesi , at Subarctic latitudes (60--65°N). All protostrongylid parasites have an indirect life-cycle, where first-stage larvae are shed in the feces of a mammalian definitive host, penetrate the foot of a gastropod intermediate host, and develop to infective third-stage larvae. Protostrongylid larvae were recovered from over 2000 fecal samples from thinhorn sheep (Ovis dalli ) and other hosts for P. odocoilei...
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Discovery of a new host-parasite relationship, Parelaphostrongylus odocoilei in Dall's sheep (Ovis dalli dalli ) in the Canadian North, prompted the first investigation of the geographic distribution, pathogenesis, ecology and epidemiology of this parasite, as well as the related protostrongylid Protostrongylus stilesi , at Subarctic latitudes (60--65°N). All protostrongylid parasites have an indirect life-cycle, where first-stage larvae are shed in the feces of a mammalian definitive host, penetrate the foot of a gastropod intermediate host, and develop to infective third-stage larvae. Protostrongylid larvae were recovered from over 2000 fecal samples from thinhorn sheep (Ovis dalli ) and other hosts for P. odocoilei...
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Ecologists and conservation biologists alike aim to understand factors determining the abundance and distribution of free-living organisms and to pinpoint why free-ranging animal populations decline. My broad goals were to test ecological hypotheses related to timing of breeding and offspring survival in lesser scaup ( Aythya affinis, hereafter scaup), a boreal-breeding diving duck species and to examine breeding-season explanations for why scaup populations remain below conservation goals. I demonstrated that timing of breeding and clutch size in scaup were remarkably consistent across a broad environmental gradient. Clutch initiation date was unaffected by growing season length (GSL) or latitude and was only marginally...
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