Thesis contains a design of the arboretum of native woody plants of Czech Republic, which should be placed in the area of the Natural History Museum Semenec in Tyn nad Vltavou. Its aim is to introduce diversity of Czech trees and shrubs species. The arboretum is arranged so as to present particular vegetation zones. This indicator appears in terms of popular scientific mission of the arboretum as the most obvious and comprehensible. Special sections of arboretum are devoted to the azonal communities including those that develops in terms of marginal hydric series. Created arboretum of native woody plants of Czech Republic will serve to general public (tourists, school groups, univerzity students etc.) in the implementation of science educational programs

Die musiktheoretische Analyse setzt die Musik Bartóks mit der Beirachs und Shaws in Beziehung und fragt nach Schnittstellen in der Musik der drei Komponisten.

Doctor of Philosophy / Biology / Walter K. Dodds / Ari M. Jumpponen / Due to agricultural practices and urbanization, tallgrass prairie ecosystems have become threatened as < 5% of its historical coverage exists today. The small remainder of praire that does exist is further threatened by the encroachment of woody plant species. Woody plant encroachment may not only alter prairie ecosystem function, but also prairie microbial communities responsible for these functional processes. Further, prairies are high disturbance ecosystems, especially prairie streams which are hydrologically harsh. They support communities that frequently undergo succession due to recurring flood and drought conditions, yet little is known about the response of microbial communities to these disturbances. In my dissertation, I first address the degree of woody vegetation expansion in riparian corridors (parallel to streams) in watersheds with variable fire frequency and grazing. I found that the rate of riparian woody expansion declines with higher fire intervals and is not affected by grazing, but even annual burns may not prevent woody plant expansion in riparian zones from occurring. Second, I quantified the effect of using restorations of riparian corridors, through removal of woody plants, on physical, chemical, and microbial community (bacteria and fungi) dynamics across stream to upslope soils. Removal restoration causes a decrease in NH₄⁺ and soil water content, and causes streams and upslope soils to become similar in fungal community richness unlike forested landscapes. Bacterial communities were minimally impacted by removals, but were highly structured among stream to upslope soils due to multiple environmental gradients (i.e., pH, NO₃⁻, soil moisture). Lastly, I examined the successional development of biofilm-associated microbial communities in a prairie stream from both a functional and structural perspective. I found that biofilm microbes exhibited strong successional trajectories, with communities developing towards net autotrophy and therefore becoming reliant upon in-stream derived carbon. Further, bacterial communities displayed spatial differences, but much stronger temporal patterns in community composition were detected. These studies highlight how woody plant encroachment may influence stream ecosystems in addition to spatiotemporal trends in microbial community assembly.

Master of Science / Department of Biology / Samantha Wisely / As human populations increase world-wide, land use and land cover are altered to support the rapid anthropogenic expansion. These landscape alterations influence patterns of zoonotic infectious disease emergence and propagation. It is therefore becoming increasingly important to study emerging and re-emerging diseases to predict and manage for future epidemics. Studies of directly-transmitted infectious diseases should consider three components of disease epidemiology: characteristics of the pathogen, ecology of the host, and habitat configuration of the underlying landscape. I studied the influence of both the host ecology of the striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) and the alteration of the underlying landscape on the epidemiology of rabies virus in the Flint Hills of Kansas. This tall-grass prairie is experiencing woody expansion due to anthropogenic disturbance, altering the landscape on which the rabies virus emerges and spreads. We first studied the behavioral and social ecology of the striped skunk using field and genetic methods. We concluded that 1) striped skunks reached high population densities in anthropogenically disturbed habitats, 2) these individuals were not closely related, and 3) contact rates could be influenced by temperature. Using habitat-specific skunk densities from this initial study, we created spatially-explicit contact networks of skunk populations across the Upper Kansas River Watershed and simulated the emergence and spread of rabies through the system. This modeling approach revealed a threshold of forest habitat beyond which striped skunks became increasingly connected and the rabies virus reached greater extents across the landscape. Based on these findings we recommend fire regimes and land cover alterations to reduce woody encroachment across the Flint Hills and to avoid future disease epidemics in the region.

Habitat loss, habitat fragmentation and species invasions have been recognized as three of the leading threats to biodiversity. I examined the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on native and invasive plants in central Texas. During the last century, the density and abundance of woody plants has been increasing in the savannas of eastern Edwards Plateau. This process, known as woody plant encroachment, not only reduces the amount of open herbaceous habitat but also fragments that habitat creating smaller and more isolated patches. In three studies, I investigated the consequences of this habitat loss and fragmentation for plants which do not occur under the cover of woody plants including native grasses and forbs and the invasive Eurasian bunchgrass, Bothriochloa ischaemum (King Ranch Bluestem). In the first study, I show that woody plant encroachment reduces native herbaceous species richness (the number of species in a given area). Using a collection of historical aerial photographs, I demonstrate that current native herbaceous species richness was most strongly related to recent habitat amount, but to the degree of habitat fragmentation at least 50 years ago. In a second study, I show that the presence of B. ischaemum was negatively related to the degree of fragmentation in the surrounding landscape. Finally, I found that B. ischaemum had higher rates of germination and growth in experimental plots where the species commonly lost with woody plant encroachment were removed than in unmanipulated control plots. Together, this work suggests that woody plant encroachment is directly slowing the spread of an invasive species while indirectly facilitating its establishment. / text

No description available.

Two independent local tree-ring chronologies of oak in the Netherlands are described. Chronology I contains recent wood, wood from mills, and paintings. This chronology begins in A.D. 1973 and goes back to 1385 and is thought to be from inland areas of the Netherlands and the adjacent German area. Chronology 11 is built up from paintings and sculptures and ranges from A.D. 1623 to 1140; the origin of the wood is presumed to be from a coastal site in the Netherlands.

Huber identified in samples from the forests of central Europe features for characterising by their wood structure the two species of British oak. We have confirmed for recently felled oaks the suitability of his method of analysis and applied it to timbers from ancient buildings and to samples from sub-fossil oaks. The two species appear to have persisted in separate locations during the last ice age. Such analysis of the numerous Holocene oaks in Europe now being dated by den - drochronology offers the possibility of studying the separate migration of the species.

The variation in wood density within growth rings was determined from X-ray negative images of wood samples of Gmelina arborea. The within-tree and between-tree comparisons showed that no two growth rings had exactly similar patterns of variation in the radial direction. The proportions of wood in four within-ring density classes were estimated. The variations in the proportions of wood in the four classes with age were nonlinear. On the average, the proportion of low density wood decreased with increasing age, while the proportion of high density wood increased with age. Regression analysis testing different curvilinear models showed that 37 to 99 per cent of the variations in the proportions of wood were associated with variations in age. Maximum and minimum ring density were negatively correlated with dry season rainfall. Variations in the proportion of high density wood and mean ring density were not associated with corresponding variation in dry season rainfall. The proportions of low and high density wood, mean ring density, maximum ring density and minimum ring density were not determined by annual rainfall.

The relative weights on individual trees in a biweight site chronology can indicate the consistency of tree growth responses to macroclimate and can be the basis for stratifying trees in climate-growth analyses. This was explored with 45 years of ring-width indices for 200 trees from five even-aged jack pine (Pints banksiana Lamb.) stands. Average individual-tree relative weights were similar, but most trees had at least one transient occurrence of low relative weight. The standard deviations of individual-tree relative weights suggested that some trees had mom variable growth responses than others. The trees were classified by the average and standard deviation of their relative weights, and biweight site chronologies were then calculated for these subgroups. Chronologies derived from trees with low average weights, and from trees with high standard deviation of weights, sometimes appeared to be different from chronologies derived from the remaining trees.