This study was conducted to determine the fatty acid (FA) content in pasture grasses, legumes, and non-leguminous forbs northeast West Virginia. Grass, legume, forb plant material were collected from rotationally stocked pastures analyzed for crude protein (CP), linoleic (C18:2), α-linolenic (C18:3), total FA content. Species within botanical classes varied Forbs had highest (C18:2) followed by...

Plants can influence the soil they grow in, and via these changes in the soil they can positively or negatively influence other plants that grow later in this soil, a phenomenon called plant-soil feedback. A fascinating possibility is then to apply positive plant-soil feedback effects in sustainable agriculture to promote plant growth and resistance to pathogens. We grew the cut flower chrysant...

Climate change models for many ecosystems predict more extreme climatic events in the future, including exacerbated drought conditions. Here we assess the effects of drought by quantifying temporal variation in community composition of a complex montane meadow landscape characterized by a hydrological gradient. The meadows occur in two regions of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Gallatin and ...

The dynamics of invasive species may depend on their abilities to compete for resources and exploit disturbances relative to the abilities of native species. We test this hypothesis and explore its implications for the restoration of native ecosystems in one of the most dramatic ecological invasions worldwide, the replacement of native perennial grasses by exotic annual grasses and forbs in 9.2...

The hypothesized presence of large regions of grass and forb-dominated "steppe tundra" across Alaska and Siberia during the Pleistocene glacial epochs has led to a search for modern analogs. Evidence is presented for the presence of steppe vegetation on south-facing slopes and summits of pingos within the central Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska. Vegetation, floristics, soils, and climatic factor...

This study is presented within the context that climate warming and sea-ice decline has been occurring throughout much of the Arctic over the past several decades, and that terrestrial ecosystems at high latitudes are sensitive to the resultant alterations in surface temperatures. Results are from analyzing interannual satellite records of vegetation greenness across a bioclimate gradient of th...

McDonald, Philip M.; Fiddler, Gary O. 2007. Development of vegetation in a young ponderosa pine plantation: effect of treatment duration and time since disturbance. Res. Pap. PSW-RP-251. Albany, CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station. 23 p. The density and development of deerbrush (Ceanothus integerrimus Hook. & Arn.), other shrubs, forbs, gramino...

To date, it has been thought that endophytic fungi in forbs infect the leaves of their hosts most commonly by air-borne spores (termed "horizontal transmission"). Here, we show that vertical transmission from mother plant to offspring, via seeds, occurs in six forb species (Centaurea cyanus, C. nigra,Papaver rhoeas,Plantago lanceolata,Rumex acetosa, and Senecio vulgaris), suggesting that this m...