Potato dormancy is a major obstacle in post-harvest evaluations for the certification of seed. Objectives of this study were to evaluate the efficacy of several treatments to break dormancy and induce sprouting soon after harvest for Russet Burbank, Clearwater Russet, and Umatilla Russet. Treatments included: (a) control held at 18.3 C, (b) cold-stratification held at 4.4 C for two weeks, (c) temperature fluctuation held at 4....

Potato virus Y (PVY) is an important pathogen in seed potato production that may cause seed lots to be downgraded or rejected for certification. A study was conducted to determine if mother seed tuber size influences the prevalence of PVY within a seed sample during evaluations of seed-borne infection in a grow-out. The trial was conducted using Russet Norkotah (two growing seasons) and Umatilla Russet (one growing season). Se...

Recent work has shown the decline of insect abundance, diversity and biomass, with potential implications for ecosystem services. These declines are especially pronounced in regions with high human activity, and urbanization is emerging as a significant contributing factor. However, the scale of these declines and the traits that determine variation in species‐specific responses remain less well understood, especially in subtr...

Identifying the genetic architecture of complex phenotypes is a central goal of modern biology, particularly for disease‐related traits. Genome‐wide association methods are a classical approach for identifying the genomic basis of variation in disease phenotypes, but such analyses are particularly challenging in natural populations due to sample size difficulties. Extensive mark–recapture data, strong linkage disequilibrium an...

We assembled data from a global network of automated lake observatories to test hypotheses regarding the drivers of ecosystem metabolism. We estimated daily rates of respiration and gross primary production (GPP) for up to a full year in each lake, via maximum likelihood fits of a free‐water metabolism model to continuous high‐frequency measurements of dissolved oxygen concentrations. Uncertainties were determined by a bootstr...

A year‐long acoustic survey for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales was conducted at two sites on the central and western Scotian Shelf. Autonomous hydrophones recorded sound continuously from July 2004 to August 2005. Right whale contact calls (upcalls) were identified using automatic recognition software, and the resulting detections were checked manually. Substantial numbers of hours with upcalls were observed...