Thesis (M.A.)--George Mason University, 2008. / Vita: p. 109. Thesis director: Richard J. Diecchio. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed June 30, 2008). Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-108). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Australia, 2007.

Theses (M.S.)--University of Hawai'i at Hilo, 2009. / Advisor : Hart, Patrick J. Bibliography : p.39-42.

Orientador: Adler Guilherme Viadana / Banca: Helmut Troppmair / Banca: Mário de Biasi / Resumo: Esta é uma pesquisa Biogeográfica que utilizou três técnicas simplificadas para fazer o mapeamento da vegetação original de parte do setor nordeste do estado de São Paulo. As técnicas usadas nesta pesquisa são: " a obtenção e análise dos dados através da interpretação das Toponímias; " a leitura de antigos relatos de viagens e " aferição dos dados em Trabalho de Campo. O objetivo da pesquisa é o de salientar que através de tais técnicas é possível obter bons resultados ao estudar a vegetação original de um lugar. / Abstract: This is a Biogeography research which has used three simplyfieds tecnics to make a map of the original vegetation from one of the northeast parts from São Paulo State. The tecnics used in this research are: " obtainment and data analyzis through that toponymy's interpretation ; " the reading of the old travel reports and " checking datas in the work field. The objective of this research is emphasize that through such tecnics it is possible to obtain good results at estudy the original vegetation of a place. / Mestre

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Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:27:52Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2003-07-08Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:57:05Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 ceturi_jpj_me_rcla.pdf: 868337 bytes, checksum: c7e31fb989e04cceed77661bb4e1a470 (MD5) / Esta é uma pesquisa Biogeográfica que utilizou três técnicas simplificadas para fazer o mapeamento da vegetação original de parte do setor nordeste do estado de São Paulo. As técnicas usadas nesta pesquisa são: a obtenção e análise dos dados através da interpretação das Toponímias; a leitura de antigos relatos de viagens e aferição dos dados em Trabalho de Campo. O objetivo da pesquisa é o de salientar que através de tais técnicas é possível obter bons resultados ao estudar a vegetação original de um lugar. / This is a Biogeography research which has used three simplyfieds tecnics to make a map of the original vegetation from one of the northeast parts from São Paulo State. The tecnics used in this research are: obtainment and data analyzis through that toponymy's interpretation ; the reading of the old travel reports and checking datas in the work field. The objective of this research is emphasize that through such tecnics it is possible to obtain good results at estudy the original vegetation of a place.

Population fragmentation and subsequent isolation in different refugia during the glacial advances of the Pleistocene are believed to have had a significant impact on current levels of genetic and morphological diversity. Despite the importance of these glacial refugia for biodiversity, our understanding of their distribution on the northwestern coast of North America and their relative impact on populations remains limited. As the most isolated group of islands in the Pacific Northwest, Haida Gwaii has been the subject of intense study both from the perspective of its complex glacial history and endemic flora and fauna. The ubiquitous presence of glacial features on this archipelago points to extensive ice cover during the late Wisconsin (Fraser glaciation) and populations which could only have become established postglacially. However, the large assemblage of unique mammalian and avian fauna found on Haida Gwaii has led to suggestions that these divergent vertebrates actually evolved through long isolation by continuously inhabiting these islands or nearby regions throughout the last glacial maximum. To assess Haida Gwaii’s role as a glacial refugium and the relictual status of its endemic black bear (Ursus americanus), marten (Martes americana), short-tailed weasel (Mustela erminea), caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and Saw-whet Owl (Aegolius acadicus), a broad phylogeographic study using sequence comparisons of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome b was undertaken. Phylogeographic structure was observed in the black bear (n= 33), marten (n= 18) and short-tailed weasel (n= 32). Based on parsimony, maximum likelihood, and neighbour-joining analyses of 719 bp of cytochrome b, two geographically structured black bear lineages were unambiguously identified: 1) a continental lineage found in the Yukon, Alberta, Alaska, Montana and Pennsylvania (americanus) and mainland BC (americanus and cinnamomum) and 2) a coastal lineage found on Haida Gwaii (carlottae), Vancouver Island (vancouveri) and the Olympic Peninsula (altifrontalis). The two lineages were defined by 24 synapomorphies and an average sequence divergence of 3.6%. Average intralineage divergence was 0.1%. Similarly, two geographically structured lineages, continental and coastal, were also identified in marten using the same types of analyses on 3II bp of cytochrome b. The continental lineage included marten from mainland BC (caurina and abietinoides) and Newfoundland (atrata) whereas the coastal lineage included marten from Haida Gwaii (nesophila) and Vancouver Island (vancouverensis). The two lineages were defined by three synapomorphies and an average sequence divergence of 1.2%. Average intralineage divergence was 1%. Phylogeographic structure was also observed in the short-tailed weasel using 148 to 673 bp of cytochrome b. Three major lineages were identified and named according to their putative refugial source areas: Beringia, which included weasels from Japan (orientalis) and the Yukon (arctica), a continental or southern source, which encompassed weasels from mainland BC (richardsonii, invicta,fallenda), Manitoba (bangsi), and Ontario (cicognanii), and Haida Gwaii which included only those weasels from Haida Gwaii (haidarum). Short-tailed weasels from Vancouver Island (anguinae) and some areas along the coast demonstrated an affinity to both southern and Haida Gwaii weasels. Relative to the continental lineage, the coastal lineage was defined by 13 synapomorphies; the Beringian lineage was defined by 10 synapomorphies. Average sequence divergence was 2.5 % and 2.2% respectively. Divergence between the coastal weasels and Beringian weasels was 2.4%. There was little mtDNA diversity within the coastal lineage as the average intralineage divergence was 0.8%. Little or no phylogeographic structure was observed in the caribou and Saw-whet Owl. Of the 313 bp examined in two barren ground caribou (granti) and seven woodland caribou (four tarandus and three dawsoni), three tarandus and two dawsoni formed a lineage defined by one synapomorphy. The two barren ground, one tarandus, and one dawsoni were excluded from this lineage by one to three substitutions. Similarly, little phylogeographic structure was observed in the Saw-whet Owl. Analyses of a 241 bp of cytochrome b sequenced from this species indicated no genetic divergence between individuals as far apart as Haida Gwaii (brooksi) and Manitoba (acadicus). The maximum divergence observed between individuals was 0.4%. The phylogeographic patterns from these five species have two major implications with regard to the issue of glacial refugia and the relictual status of the Haida Gwaii endemics: 1) With the possible exception of haidarum, the suite of morphological features characterizing the endemics carlottae, nesophila, dawsoni and brooksi appear to have been derived postglacially. In fact close genetic affinity of these endemic subspecies with adjacent conspecifics suggest that population fragmentation caused by glaciers has had little effect on morphological differentiation and that adaptation to local ecological environments has played a more influential role in their evolution. 2) Emerging data of a mid-Pleistocene split of many vertebrate taxa and the geographic distribution of these various generic lineages, including the black bear, marten and short-tailed weasel in this region cumulatively suggests that a refugium existed on the continental shelf off the central coast of British Columbia and was possibly part of a larger (or series of refugia) refugium which extended further north and south along this coast. Given the broad assemblage of taxa which might have persisted here during the last glaciation, this refugium was probably ecologically productive and as such, was likely to have been an important alternate source area for the postglacial recolonizarion of northwestern North America. / Graduate

Species richness of virtually all high-level taxonomic groups is strongly statistically related to climatic variables such as temperature and precipitation, and consistently so across space and time. These observations are consistent with a causal link between the number of species that occur in a given region and its climate. Although dozens of hypotheses have been proposed, the main mechanisms underlying this pattern remain largely unresolved. And, few ecological studies have attempted to identify regularities in the individual species distributions that make up the richness–climate relationship. Despite the complexities of species’ biologies, I found that, to a first approximation, species’ probability of occupancy at continental scales were generally well statistically explained by a Gaussian function of temperature and precipitation. This simple model appeared general among species, taxa and regions. However, although individual species’ ranges are strongly statistically related to climate, spatial variations in richness cannot be explained by systematic variations in species’ climatic niches. And, individual species track changes in climatic variables through time much more weakly than species richness tracks these changes, suggesting that richness is at least partly constrained by mechanisms independent of species identities. Moreover, at macro-scales, species richness was also not strongly predictable from the temperature at which clades have originated, from historical variability in climatic variables nor from local short-term extirpation rates. In sum, I rejected several prominent hypotheses aiming to explain richness–climate relationship and found several lines of evidence inconsistent with the common idea that climatic constraints on individual species, by themselves, can explain richness–climate relationship. I propose a mechanism to explain, as a first approximation, the continental biogeography of species distributions that relies on neutral processes of dispersal and local extinctions within species’ broad deterministic thermal tolerances.

Ornithischian dinosaurs form a diverse, globally-distributed clade including the dominant large land herbivores in many Mesozoic faunas. However, because we lack a well-resolved species-level phylogeny including basal and derived members, our understanding of the initial ornithischian radiation in the Late Triassic is unclear, which further complicates our ability to test biogeographic scenarios. A new species-level phylogenetic analysis, based on comprehensive empirical assessments of a wide sample of ornithischians with an emphasis on basal taxa, helps resolve the relationships of historically labile taxa. Heterodontosauridae is a monophyletic group outside of Genasauria, corroborating recent studies, though the current analysis did not recover distinct Laurasian and Gondwanan clades as has been previously reported. Lesothosaurus, traditionally considered as one of the most basal ornithischians, is here recovered as the basalmost neornithischian more closely related to cerapodans than to thyreophorans. The resultant phylogeny shows good resolution among basal taxa; however, most members of Cerapoda collapse into a polytomy recovering only a monophyletic Iguanodontia, Marginocephalia, and a few other derived clades. The phylogenetic placement of these taxa is critical for assessments of character evolution for more derived clades and ancestral state reconstructions for Ornithischia in general, as well as determining areas of origination for clades across the tree. With a detailed species-level phylogeny, I was able to estimate the hypothetical ancestral body plan for all Ornithischia by reconstructing the character states in the present analysis. The results of this analysis suggest that the hypothetical ancestral ornithischian had similar skull morphology to Lesothosaurus, but that the postcranial skeleton was more similar to other basal ornithischians such as Heterodontosaurus and to basal saurischians such as Herrerasaurus and Eoraptor. Most analyses of derived clades of ornithischians rely on Lesothosaurus as a representative outgroup taxon; however, the postcranial skeleton of Lesothosaurus represents a fairly specialized, relatively abbreviated forelimb unlike what the ancestral ornithischian possessed. Building on the species-level phylogeny focused on basal taxa, I performed a detailed event-based quantitative biogeographic analysis based on a comprehensive composite phylogeny including more derived taxa from previously published studies. A few patterns can be explained by vicariance but numerous dispersal events are required to explain overall ornithischian biogeography, particularly in the Late Jurassic and Early and Late Cretaceous. Although the early record of ornithischians is sparse, it is clear that the clade originated from small, bipedal cursors in southern Gondwana and spread into Laurasia by the Early Jurassic and quickly diversified into the iconic groups that characterize Ornithischia. A well-resolved phylogenetic and biogeographic hypothesis of ornithischian diversity, particularly with basal taxa such as the heterodontosaurids and Lesothosaurus, provides a framework on which to test hypotheses of coevolution as well as the evolution of herbivory, ontogeny, physiology, and sexual dimorphism in the fossil record.

This dissertation has two overall objectives: first, to demonstrate the utility of paleozoological data for ongoing and future mussel-conservation efforts in Texas and second, to evaluate whether simple measures of habitat (e.g., water depth, velocity and particle size) are important for demonstrating the within-habitat spatial separation of mussels. Although these topics may seem disparate, both are important for increasing our understanding of unionid ecology and biogeography. Chapters 1 through 3 examine the use of paleozoological data for mussel conservation. Although these types of data are not new they have rarely been used in mussel conservation efforts within Texas. This is unfortunate because paleozoological data can provide an excellent record of the mussel fauna prior to wide-scale modern impacts and in areas where historical survey data are lacking. Chapter 4 examines whether assessments of microhabitat for mussels using simple measures of habitat (e.g., water velocity, depth and particle size) are useful. Recent studies have suggested that these measures do not explain the mussel distribution in flowing streams. If this is correct, instream flow studies using this approach need to be revised. Results of Chapter 4 indicate that mussels in the lower Brazos River basin are constrained in distribution by the availability of heterogenous substrate. Appendix A, details the first account of a living population of Truncilla macrodon, which is a candidate species for the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The population was found while conducting mussel instream flow studies in the lower Brazos River basin.