EVALUATION OF METHODS FOR ESTABLISHING VEGETATION IN CREATED WETLAND MITIGATION SITES IN EASTERN NEBRASKA Andrew A. Miller, MS University of Nebraska, 2008 Advisor: Dr. Tom Bragg Seventeen wetland mitigation sites in eastern Nebraska were evaluated, by vegetative zone, to assess the relative success of active and passive wetland vegetation establishment techniques. For sites with available reco...

Dating the Tree of Life has now become central to relating patterns of biodiversity to key processes in Earth history such as plate tectonics and climate change. Regions with a Mediterranean climate have long been noted for their exceptional species richness and high endemism. How and when these biota assembled can only be answered with a good understanding of the sequence of divergence times f...

The California Floristic Province exhibits one of the richest floras on the planet, with more than 5500 native plant species, approximately 40% of which are endemic. Despite its impressive diversity and the attention it has garnered from ecologists and evolutionary biologists, historical causes of species richness and endemism in California remain poorly understood. Using a phylogenetic analysi...

In regularly burned grassland on Morro Santana, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil, we investigated differences in the floristic composition and their relation to soil properties, aspect and distance from the forest border. In 48 plots of 0.75 m2, we identified a total of 201 species from a local species pool of approximately 450 to 500 species. Most species occurred in low frequencies, showing clumpy di...

The millions of plant specimens that have been collected and stored in Chinese herbaria over the past ~110 years have recently been digitized and geo-referenced. Here we use this unique collection data set for species distribution modeling exercise aiming at mapping &explaining the botanical richness; delineating China's phytogeographical regions and investigating the environmental drivers of t...

The exceptionally high plant diversity of the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) comprises a combination of ancient lineages and young radiations. A previous phylogenetic study of Aizoaceae subfamily Ruschioideae dated the radiation of this clade of > 1500 species in the GCFR to 3.8-8.7 Mya, establishing it as a flagship example of a diversification event triggered by the onset of a summer-ar...

The recently completed Checklist of Croatian Vascular Flora for the fisl lime endeavours to quantify the national vascular flora. The vascular flora numbers 5.347 taxa in all (4275 species and 1072 subspecies). According to species number per square unit, Croatia takes 3rd place in Europe in floristic richness. The three biggest families are Compositae (742), Fabaceac (458) and Poaceae (448), a...

Although bacteria and fungi are well-known to be decomposers of leaf litter, few studies have examined their compositions and diversities during the decomposition process in tropical stream water. Xishuangbanna is a tropical region preserving one of the highest floristic diversity areas in China. In this study, leaf litter of four dominant plant species in Xishuangbanna was incubated in stream ...

Historically, seed banks conferred resilience to Laurentian Great Lakes coastal wetlands by providing propagules of many species to replace invasive plants, such as Typha glauca Godr. After flooding, the seed bank could allow recovery of wetland composition and structure as the water levels fall. Using the seedling emergence method to estimate seed density, species and guild richness, and flori...

The use of glyphosate, as a post-emergence broad-spectrum herbicide in genetically modified glyphosate-tolerant (GT) cotton, supposes a big change in weed management programs with respect to a conventional regime. Thus, alterations in arable flora and arthropod fauna must be considered when evaluating their potential impacts. A 3-year farm-scale study was conducted in a 2-ha GT cotton crop, in ...