The objective of this study was to measure the communities associated with different seagrass species to predict how shifts in seagrass species composition may affect associated fauna. In the northwestern Gulf of Mexico, coverage of the historically dominant shoal grass (Halodule wrightii) is decreasing, while coverage of manatee grass (Syringodium filiforme) and turtle grass (Thalassia testudi...

Many processes that are fundamental to tropical rainforest maintenance and regeneration take place in the forest canopy. Recently developed access techniques afford biologists nondestructive means to document and quantify canopy biota and their accompanying activities and interactions. Results from studies involving within-canopy observations and measurements of nutrient cycling, epiphyte distr...

In distance learning environments, advisors can start off again a stalled learning process. EpiTalk is a platform enabling to develop advisors for individual and collaborative learning. EpiTalk advisors rely on agents, organizations and hierarchical graphs. Hierarchical graphs describe advisors. At run-time, agents provide autonomy to each advisor’s components, while organizations link and co-o...

The foliar pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae exhibits an exceptional ability to survive on asymptomatic plants as an epiphyte. Intermittent wetting events on plants lead to osmotic and matric stresses which must be tolerated for survival as an epiphyte. In this study, we have applied bioinformatic, genetic, and biochemical approaches to address water stress tolerance in P. syringae pv....

Although increasing efforts are being made to restore tropical forests, little information is available regarding the time scales required for carbon and plant biodiversity to recover to the values associated with undisturbed forests. To address this knowledge gap, we carried out a meta-analysis comparing data from more than 600 secondary tropical forest sites with nearby undisturbed reference ...

We investigated the potential for nonvascular epiphytic species (primarily lichens) to affect the quality of different host tree species for the vascular epiphyte Tillandsia usneoides in the southeastern USA. Different host tree species had substantially different abundances of Tillandsia, and these abundances were correlated with the composition of nonvascular epiphyte communities. In greenhou...