Biology Faculty Research, Publications and Presentations: Recent submissions
Now showing items 161-180 of 185
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Breeding Bird Surveys at Alexandra Fiord, Ellesmere Island, Nunavut (1980-2008)
Long-term monitoring of bird populations in the Arctic is of considerable interest as this area is experiencing rapid climate warming; however, multi-decadal studies in the Canadian High Arctic are rare. Over five summers ... -
Intense, Natural Pollution Affects Arctic Tundra Vegetation at the Smoking Hills, Canada
No abstract available. -
Survey of Vegetated Areas and Musk-Ox Populations in East-Central Ellesmere Island
No abstract available. -
Entombed Plant-Communities Released by a Retreating Glacier at Central Ellesmere Island, Canada
No abstract available. -
Pacific Salmon in Hot Water: Applying Aerobic Scope Models and Biotelemetry to Predict the Success of Spawning Migrations
Concern over global climate change is widespread, but quantifying relationships between temperature change and animal fitness has been a challenge for scientists. Our approach to this challenge was to study migratory ... -
Individual Variation in Migration Speed of Upriver-Migrating Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River in Relation to Their Physiological and Energetic Status at Marine Approach
Little research has examined individual variation in migration speeds of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) in natural river systems or attempted to link migratory behavior with physiological and energetic status on a ... -
Mechanisms Influencing the Timing and Success of Reproductive Migration in a Capital Breeding Semelparous Fish Species, the Sockeye Salmon
Two populations of homing sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka; Adams and Chilko) were intercepted in the marine approaches around the northern and southern ends of Vancouver Island (British Columbia, Canada) en route to ... -
The dystroglycan complex is necessary for stabilization of acetylcholine receptor clusters at neuromuscular junctions and formation of the synaptic basement membrane
The dystrophin-associated protein (DAP) complex spans the sarcolemmal membrane linking the cytoskeleton to the basement membrane surrounding each myofiber. Defects in the DAP complex have been linked previously to a ... -
Reduced Retinal Function in the Absence of Na(v)1.6
Background: Mice with a function-blocking mutation in the Scn8a gene that encodes Na(v)1.6, a voltage-gated sodium channel (VGSC) isoform normally found in several types of retinal neurons, have previously been found to ... -
Methods for selecting fixed-effect models for heterogeneous codon evolution, with comments on their application to gene and genome data
Background: Models of codon evolution have proven useful for investigating the strength and direction of natural selection. In some cases, a priori biological knowledge has been used successfully to model heterogeneous ... -
Multilocus Genotyping Assays for Single Nucleotide Polymorphism-Based Subtyping of Listeria monocytogenes Isolates
Listeria monocytogenes is responsible for serious invasive illness associated with consumption of contaminated food and places a significant burden on public health and the agricultural economy. We recently developed a ... -
Phylogenomic analysis of natural selection pressure in Streptococcus genomes
Background: In comparative analyses of bacterial pathogens, it has been common practice to discriminate between two types of genes: (i) those shared by pathogens and their non-pathogenic relatives (core genes), and (ii) ... -
Prevalence and evolution of core photosystem II genes in marine cyanobacterial viruses and their hosts
Cyanophages ( cyanobacterial viruses) are important agents of horizontal gene transfer among marine cyanobacteria, the numerically dominant photosynthetic organisms in the oceans. Some cyanophage genomes carry and express ... -
Improving Evolutionary Models for Mitochondrial Protein Data with Site-Class Specific Amino Acid Exchangeability Matrices
Adequate modeling of mitochondrial sequence evolution is an essential component of mitochondrial phylogenomics (comparative mitogenomics). There is wide recognition within the field that lineage-specific aspects of ... -
Positive Darwinian Selection in the Piston That Powers Proton Pumps in Complex I of the Mitochondria of Pacific Salmon
The mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation is well understood, but evolution of the proteins involved is not. We combined phylogenetic, genomic, and structural biology analyses to examine the evolution of twelve mitochondrial ... -
Both Geography and Ecology Contribute to Mating Isolation in Guppies
Local adaptation to different environments can promote mating isolation - either as an incidental by-product of trait divergence, or as a result of selection to avoid maladaptive mating. Numerous recent empirical examples ... -
Identifying Canadian Freshwater Fishes through DNA Barcodes
Background: DNA barcoding aims to provide an efficient method for species-level identifications using an array of species specific molecular tags derived from the 59 region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I ... -
Mixed evidence for reduced local adaptation in wild salmon resulting from interbreeding with escaped farmed salmon: complexities in hybrid fitness
Interbreeding between artificially-selected and wild organisms can have negative fitness consequences for the latter. In the Northwest Atlantic, farmed Atlantic salmon recurrently escape into the wild and enter rivers where ... -
Population Structure as Revealed by mtDNA and Microsatellites in Northern Fur Seals, Callorhinus ursinus, throughout Their Range
Background: The northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus; NFS) is a widely distributed pinniped that has been shown to exhibit a high degree of philopatry to islands, breeding areas on an island, and even to specific ... -
Synchronized hatch and its ecological significance in rainbow smelt Osmerus mordax in St. Mary's Bay, Newfoundland
Early life history stages in most marine animals are subject to high mortality through predation, starvation, and dispersal. Accordingly, the potential exists for the selection of behavioral mechanisms that reduce ...