In a recently published article in Applications in Plant Sciences, our team of professors, teachers, and students established methods for using a sound wave technology called sonic tomography to measure decay inside living trees. These procedures were tested through measurements on more than 1,800 living trees of 173 tropical rainforest tree species in the Republic… Continue Reading Using sound to see inside trees
Young, H.S., Parker, I.M., Gilbert, G.S., Guerra, A.S. and Nunn, C.L. 2016. Introduced Species, Disease Ecology, and Biodiversity–Disease Relationships. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2016.09.008 Species introductions are a dominant component of biodiversity change but are not explicitly included in most discussions of biodiversity–disease relationships. This is a major oversight given the multitude of effects… Continue Reading Biodiversity-Disease Relationships
New pest-disease complex threatens California forests Shannon Lynch, Akif Eskalen, and Gregory S. Gilbert Cal-IPC News 24(2):10-13 (Summer 2016) Together with the avocado industry, land managers of native forest communities in southern California face the imminent threat of a new emergent pest-disease complex: Fusarium dieback – Shot Hole Borers (FD-SHB). Our work points to a… Continue Reading Emergent Fusarium dieback!
The evolutionary ecology of plant disease: a phylogenetic approach Gregory S. Gilbert and Ingrid M. Parker Annual Review of Phytopathology 2016. 54: 549-578. Abstract An explicit phylogenetic perspective provides useful tools for phytopathology and plant disease ecology because the traits of both plants and microbes are shaped by their evolutionary histories. We present brief… Continue Reading Phylogenetic Disease Ecology
Graduate students, teachers, and faculty of the UCSC GK-12 SCWIBLES program in inquiry-based learning published a feature article in The American Biology Teacher (PDF) outlining how different kinds of models are integral to biology research and teaching in classrooms adopting the Next Generation Science Standards. Abstract: Models are simplified representations of more complex systems that… Continue Reading Models in NGSS
Doctoral candidate Heather Briggs just published a chapter of her dissertation in the Annals of Botany, available for download at doi:10.1093/aob/mcv175. The article what highlighted as a featured article in the journal! Here is the blurb from Annals: Most work on the impacts of heterospecific pollen deposition on plant fecundity has utilized hand-pollination… Continue Reading Heterospecific pollen
A major focus of the Gilbert lab is the UCSC Forest Ecology Research Plot (UCSC FERP). The FERP is a 16-ha mapped forest plot in the mixed-evergreen forest on the “upper” campus of UCSC, just at 25 min walk (through the forest) from the classrooms of science hill. It is a living laboratory and classroom,… Continue Reading UCSC FERP and ForestGEO®
The Gilbert and Parker labs are proud to announce the publication of Parker et al. 2015. Phylogenetic structure and host abundance drive disease pressure in communities. Nature 520:542-544. doi:10.1038/nature14372 ABSTRACT. Pathogens play an important part in shaping the structure and dynamics of natural communities, because species are not affected by them equally1, 2. A shared… Continue Reading Nature 2015
Graduate student Juniper Harrow brings her talents as artist, scientist, and educator together in her work on conservation of Joshua Trees. See the story from UCSC and from the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Here is a video by Ana Endara, STRI videographer, highlighting our NSF Dimensions in Biodiversity Fungal Dimensions project (NSF DEB-1136626) on Barro Colorado Island. This is a collaboration with Steve Hubbell, Brant Faircloth, and Travis Glenn, to understand why so many species are rare in tropical forests. This technology lets us look inside living trees to… Continue Reading Looking inside trees