Wetting and drying cycles and the fungal communities on leaf litter in streams

Resource Information

The work Wetting and drying cycles and the fungal communities on leaf litter in streams represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Missouri University of Science & Technology Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Wetting and drying cycles and the fungal communities on leaf litter in streams

Statement of responsibility

by Kele Qwinn Thrailkill

Creator

• Thrailkill, Kele Qwinn, 1982-

Author

• Thrailkill, Kele Qwinn, 1982-

Subject

• Fungi
• Limnology
• Stream ecology -- Missouri | Phelps County
• Stream health
• Riparian areas
• Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis

Language

eng

Summary

"Leaf litter is a major source of energy for streams in deciduous forests. Fungi play a critical role by converting the leaves into nutritional material for the rest of the food web. The breakdown of leaf litter and associated biota, including invertebrates and fungi, have been proposed as measures of stream health in systems affected by anthropogenic activity. Rates of leaf breakdown can be depressed in streams affected by acidity, metals, organic contaminants, and other stressors. Climate change may lead to alterations in stream hydrology such that streams experience more frequent floods as well as drying episodes. Fungal communities can be affected by the leaf litter they are growing on becoming emersed and re-immersed due to pulse-flow events. I examined the structure and function of fungal communities at several sites with varying emersion-immersion. I used DGGE in tandem with clone libraries to assess the community structure of fungi on leaves from the sites over a 15 week period. I also measured fungal biomass and microbial activity, which were closely related to each other throughout the sampling period. Sites that underwent an emersion-immersion cycle had lower activity than immersed sites initially, but sites had similar rates later after communities had become established. Overall, community composition and diversity varied among samples based on immersion, watershed, and time. Clone libraries revealed that the main taxa at my sites were not aquatic hyphomycetes, as most fungal studies have assumed, but terrestrial taxa"--Abstract, page iii

Member of

• MST thesis. Applied and Environmental Biology (M.S., 2013).

Cataloging source

UMR

Degree

M.S.

Dissertation year

2013

Granting institution

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

• dictionaries
• bibliography
• theses