Publications

Dispersal and migratory behavior are influential factors in determining how genetic diversity is distributed across the landscape. In migratory species, genetic structure can be promoted via several mechanisms including fidelity to distinct migratory routes. Particularly within North America, waterfowl management units have been delineated according to distinct longitudinal migratory...

Arctic Cod (Boreogadus saida) serve as an important link in Arctic food webs and are thus considered an important species for environmental monitoring. RNA-Seq was conducted on samples from wild-collected individuals representing various age classes and tissue types to obtain as complete a transcriptome as possible on an Illumina MiSeq, which resulted in a total of 64,457 transcripts...

The liverwort flora of Attu Island, the westernmost Aleutian Island in the United States, was studied to assess species diversity in the hyperoceanic sector of the northern boreal subzone. The field study was undertaken in sites selected to represent a spectrum of environmental variation, primarily within the eastern part of the island. Data were analyzed using our own collections on...

Advances in spectroscopic techniques have led to an increase in the use of optical measurements (absorbance and fluorescence) to assess dissolved organic matter composition and infer sources and processing. Although optical measurements are easy to make, they can be affected by many variables rendering them less comparable, including by inconsistencies in sample collection (for example...

Ancient hydrothermal systems are a high-priority target for a future Mars sample return mission because they contain energy sources for microbes and can preserve organic materials (Farmer, 2000; MEPAG Next Decade Science Analysis Group, 2008; McLennan et al.,2012; Michalski et al.,2017). Characterizing these large, heterogeneous systems with a remote explorer is difficult due to...

At high latitudes, climatic shifts hypothetically initiate recurrent episodes of divergence by isolating populations in glacial refugia—ice-free regions that enable terrestrial species persistence. Upon glacial recession, populations subsequently expand and often come into contact with other independently diverging populations, resulting in gene flow. To understand how recurrent periods...

Codominant marker systems are better suited to analyze population structure and assess the source of an individual in admixture analyses. Currently, there is no codominant marker system using microsatellites developed for the sea sandwort, Honckenya peploides (L.) Ehrh., an early colonizer in island systems. We developed and characterized novel microsatellite loci from H. peploides...

Constructed wetlands are used worldwide to improve water quality while also providing critical wetland habitat. However, wetlands have the potential to negatively impact drinking water quality by exporting dissolved organic carbon (DOC) that upon disinfection can form disinfection byproducts (DBPs) like trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs). We used a replicated field-scale...

Humans accumulate large numbers of inorganic particles in their lungs over a lifetime. Whether this causes or contributes to debilitating disease over a normal lifespan depends on the type and concentration of the particles. We developed and tested a protocol for in situ characterization of the types and distribution of inorganic particles in biopsied lung tissue from three human groups...

Commercially produced vermiculite insulation from Libby, Montana, contains trace levels of asbestiform amphibole, which is known to cause asbestos-related diseases. When vermiculite insulation is found in a building, evaluation for its potential asbestos content traditionally involves collecting a sample from an attic or wall and submitting it for time-consuming analyses at an off-site...

Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are a known source of human fecal pollution and human pathogens in urban water bodies, which may present a significant public health threat. To monitor human fecal contamination in water, bacterial fecal indicator organisms (FIOs) are traditionally used. However, because FIOs are not specific to human sources and do not correlate with human pathogens...

No abstract available.