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Uncovering the Genomic Basis of Infection Through Co-genomic Sequencing of Hosts and Parasites
Understanding the genomic basis of infectious disease is a fundamental objective in co-evolutionary theory with relevance to healthcare, agriculture, and epidemiology. Models of host-parasite co-evolution often assume that infection requires specific combinations of host and parasite genotypes. Co-evolving host and parasite loci are, therefore, expected to show associations that reflect an underlying infection/resistance allele matrix, yet little evidence for such genome-to-genome interactions has been observed among natural populations.
Modeling the trophic impacts of invasive zooplankton in a highly invaded river
The lower Columbia River (Washington and Oregon, USA) has been heavily invaded by a large number of planktonic organisms including the invasive copepod Pseudodiaptomus forbesi and the planktonic juveniles of the invasive clam, Corbicula fluminea. In order to assess the ecological impacts of these highly abundant invaders, we developed a multivariate autoregressive (MAR) model of food web dynamics based upon a 12-year time-series of plankton community and environmental data from the Columbia River.
Native and invasive zooplankton show differing responses to decadal scale increases in maximum temperatures in a large temperate river
It has been widely proposed that increasing global temperatures will promote the geographic spread of invasive species, yet few studies have examined the effects of increasing temperatures on existing populations of invaders. Here, we examine long-term temperature trends across a 70-year series of daily records from the lower Columbia River (Washington and Oregon), and assess the correlation between interannual variability in water temperature and the abundance of several native and invasive zooplankton species using an overlapping 12-year series of monthly zooplankton samples.