Alan Ross results 31
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Development of molecular diagnostic test to quantify Rhizobium leguminosarum bv. viciae (rhizobia group E/F) in soilNARA Subscribed
Aims Rhizobia are essential for nitrogen fixation in legumes. The current method for enumerating rhizobia in soil by the Most Probable Number (MPN) method is costly and time consuming. This paper describes the development of a qPCR test to quantify Rhizobium leguminosarum bv. viciae (Rlv) in soil. Methods TaqMan probe and primers were developed . Specificity of qPCR was confirmed against Rlv and non-target rhizobia and compare...
The migratory behavior of Atlantic salmon ( Salmo salar ) post‐smolts in coastal waters is poorly understood. In this collaborative study, 1914 smolts, from 25 rivers, in four countries were tagged with acoustic transmitters during a single seasonal migration. In total, 1105 post‐smolts entered the marine study areas and 438 (39.6%) were detected on a network of 414 marine acoustic receivers and an autonomous underwater vehicl...
Extreme Drought Increases the Temporal Variability of Grassland Productivity by Suppressing Dominant GrassesNARA Subscribed
Extreme droughts are intensifying, yet their impact on temporal variability of grassland functioning and its drivers remains poorly understood. We imposed a 6‐year extreme drought in two semiarid grasslands to explore how drought influences the temporal variability of ANPP and identify potential stabilising mechanisms. Drought decreased ANPP while increasing its temporal variability across grasslands. In the absence of drought...
A framework for reconstructing marine heatwaves from individual foraminifera in sedimentary archivesOA Marine
Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies with substantial ecological and economic consequences. Observations of MHWs are based on relatively short instrumental records, which limit the ability to forecast these events on decadal and longer timescales. Paleoclimate reconstructions can extend the observational record and help to evaluate model performance under near future conditions, but paleo-MH...
Lions and brown bears colonized North America in multiple synchronous waves of dispersal across the Bering Land BridgeNARA Subscribed
The Bering Land Bridge connecting North America and Eurasia was periodically exposed and inundated by oscillating sea levels during the Pleistocene glacial cycles. This land connection allowed the intermittent dispersal of animals, including humans, between Western Beringia (far northeast Asia) and Eastern Beringia (northwest North America), changing the faunal community composition of both continents. The Pleistocene glacial...
Common, low-frequency, rare, and ultra-rare coding variants contribute to COVID-19 severityNARA Subscribed
The combined impact of common and rare exonic variants in COVID-19 host genetics is currently insufficiently understood. Here, common and rare variants from whole-exome sequencing data of about 4000 SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals were used to define an interpretable machine-learning model for predicting COVID-19 severity. First, variants were converted into separate sets of Boolean features, depending on the absence or the pr...
Joint effects of climate, tree size, and year on annual tree growth derived from tree‐ring records of ten globally distributed forestsNARA Subscribed
Tree rings provide an invaluable long‐term record for understanding how climate and other drivers shape tree growth and forest productivity. However, conventional tree‐ring analysis methods were not designed to simultaneously test effects of climate, tree size, and other drivers on individual growth. This has limited the potential to test ecologically relevant hypotheses on tree growth sensitivity to environmental drivers and...
Species‐specific responses to climate change and community composition determine future calcification rates of Florida Keys reefsNARA Subscribed
Anthropogenic climate change compromises reef growth as a result of increasing temperatures and ocean acidification. Scleractinian corals vary in their sensitivity to these variables, suggesting species composition will influence how reef communities respond to future climate change. Because data are lacking for many species, most studies that model future reef growth rely on uniform scleractinian calcification sensitivities t...
Global impacts of the 1980s regime shiftNARA Subscribed
Despite evidence from a number of Earth systems that abrupt temporal changes known as regime shifts are important, their nature, scale and mechanisms remain poorly documented and understood. Applying principal component analysis, change‐point analysis and a sequential t ‐test analysis of regime shifts to 72 time series, we confirm that the 1980s regime shift represented a major change in the Earth's biophysical systems from th...
Early warning signals: the charted and uncharted territoriesNARA Subscribed
Molecular sexing of African rhinocerosNARA Subscribed
Phylogeography of lions ( Panthera leo ssp.) reveals three distinct taxa and a late Pleistocene reduction in genetic diversityNARA Subscribed
Lions were the most widespread carnivores in the late Pleistocene, ranging from southern Africa to the southern USA, but little is known about the evolutionary relationships among these Pleistocene populations or the dynamics that led to their extinction. Using ancient DNA techniques, we obtained mitochondrial sequences from 52 individuals sampled across the present and former range of lions. Phylogenetic analysis revealed thr...
Land‐use impacts and water quality targets in the intensive dairying catchment of the Toenepi Stream, New ZealandNARA Subscribed
Water quality monitoring in Toenepi Stream, New Zealand, started in 1995 in a study of dairy farming influences on lowland stream quality and has continued since then with brief interruptions. Surveys have provided information about changes in farm and soil management practices as they relate to environmental sustainability. Although average water quality in Toenepi Stream has changed little during 1995–2004, there have been s...