These images from the Smithsonian Institution depict Nancy Knowlton's work with snapping shrimp in Panama. Knowlton found that the closing of the isthmus -- dividing the Pacific Ocean from the Caribbean -- resulted in new species of shrimp.

This case study describes a practical exercise developed for students in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University. The exercise is based around simple bioclimatic modelling techniques and designed for first-year university students of biogeography, ecology and climatology. It incorporates aspects of past, present and future climates and their impact on species distributions, particularly in Victoria, but could be easily modified to suit any part of Australia. The practical exercise has three main parts: the first is on animal distributions under current and future climates; the second concerns plant distributions in the past and present; and the third part looks at how rare and endangered species may respond to future climate change in alpine environments.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"The gut microbial community, called the gut microbiota, plays an important role in health for both humans and animals. The bacterial members of this community are the most numerous and consequently get the most attention in research. However, there are often overlooked but important fungi, viruses, archaea, and protozoa in the microbiota too. The fungal subset of a microbiota is called the mycobiota, and it is particularly understudied in birds. To close this gap, a recent study comprehensively characterized the mycobiota of chickens bred for meat. While gut bacterial communities typically stabilize with age, the chicken mycobiota was dynamic over time with no clear pattern of successive changes and low overall diversity. The upper gastrointestinal (GI) tract mycobiota was more diverse than the lower tract mycobiota, and just 25 core fungal groups accounted for more than 85% of the fungal population in each section of the GI tract..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:Define biogeographyList and describe abiotic factors that affect the global distribution of plant and animal speciesCompare the impact of abiotic forces on aquatic and terrestrial environmentsSummarize the affect of abiotic factors on net primary productivity

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Our mouths are a vast jungle of microbial life. Here, more than 700 distinct types of microbes make their home, but not everywhere all at once. Each region (the tongue, teeth, gums, etc.) hosts a unique community of microorganisms. To explore this complex living structure, researchers examined the community of bacteria found in the dental plaque of 14 healthy volunteers. Samples indicated the well-known formation of intricate corncob-like structures, where a central filament made of cells of Corynebacteria (magenta) is decorated with “kernels” of spherical Streptococcus bacteria (green). A closer look revealed that these kernels can be composed of a single species of bacteria or contain mixtures of different species. The major corncob species were common to all 14 donors. Corncob composition likely was dictated by the metabolic and binding interactions shared between corncob residents..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Scientists can’t easily peer into the distant past for patterns of evolution. That makes it hard to understand the laws by which species form, transform, and nestle themselves along the tree of life. But studying how species are branched throughout the globe today can provide critical clues. In a recent study, scientists from Japan examined how the diversity of woody plant species varies across continents and across the entire planet. It’s the first study of its kind to find patterns on a global-scale data set. And the findings appear to confirm long-standing hypotheses about the roles of climate and geography in the evolution of life on earth. Climate and geography are important constraints that drive patterns of diversity among different species. They act as evolutionary filters. Harsh climates, for example, can create an ecological bottleneck that keeps certain families of organisms from dispersing into colder habitats..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This module focuses on the description of different vetation types that may be of use as part of an introductory physical geography course (biogeography), or for a class focused on the study of plants and vegetation. All images were collected from travels to learn about vegetation over the past 40 years and I openly make them available through the OER site. The resources attached to the module include:I. Description of terms used to describe and distinguish among global vegetation types (biomes)- descriptive notes and imagesII. Tropical Vegetation Types- descriptive notes and powerpoint slide showIIIl Subtropical_Temperate_Arctic Vegetation Types- descriptive notes; powerpoint slide show; supportive lists for desert and montane species. 

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Animals and plants have close relationships with the bacteria on their surfaces and macroalgae — like kelp — are no different. The spatial structure of these microbial communities can impact how they interact with their neighbors, host, and environment. A recent study used spectral imaging to characterize the spatial structure of the bacteria on _Nereocystis luetkeana_. The kelp hosted a dense microbial biofilm that consisted of closely associated, but diverse, microbial taxa. For example, Gammaproteobacteria were found close to the kelp surface, and filamentous Bacteroidetes and Alphaproteobacteria were concentrated near the biofilm-seawater interface. Bacterial density also varied along the length of the kelp blades with density increasing from new tissue at the base to older tissue at the blade tips. Between kelp populations, declining populations hosted fewer microbial cells than kelp from a stable population. This study characterized the dense, spatially differentiated community on _N..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a lung disorder affecting more than 70,000 people worldwide. Genetic mutations leading to defective fluid clearance in the lungs cause progressive airway damage. The most life-threatening challenge in patients with CF is chronic infections, which cause severe airway inflammation. Monitoring these infections could help doctors track patients’ health, informing treatment decisions. Unfortunately, current infection surveillance techniques provide a limited picture of the full spectrum of lung microbes in CF. A new study aimed to more fully define the lower airway bacterial microbiota in patients with CF. Using high-throughput sequencing, researchers evaluated sputum samples from 299 patients from Europe and the U.S. The results showed that microbiota diversity decreased when lung function declined..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Viruses might be small, but they drive ecological change across the planet. That includes helping lock otherwise harmful carbon away in soil. Unfortunately, little is known about soil viruses worldwide. A recent study extensively examined the viral microbiome of a Minnesotan peatland from the experimental site SPRUCE. Peatlands are the largest natural terrestrial reservoirs of carbon on earth and, as such, are a critical component of the carbon cycle. The makeup of viral communities in the SPRUCE peat varied with sample depth, water content, and carbon chemistry factors. Of the 4,326 distinct virus types identified from SPRUCE, only 164 had been previously detected in other soils and those matches were almost exclusively from other peatlands. Peatlands are a very wet, but otherwise terrestrial, ecosystem. However, none of the previously detected aquatic viruses matched SPRUCE viruses, which suggests a terrestrial and aquatic ‘species’ divide..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Twenty lab exercises for undergraduate-level physical geography laboratory courses. Lab manual highlights include: Customizable components to suit your needs for synchronous, asynchronous, or face-to-face instruction; Meets the C-ID descriptor requirements for content, lab activities, and objectives while including geotechnology applications and environmental justice topics where appropriate; Each lab exercise underwent peer review to ensure clarity, currency, and utility.

Charles Darwin, Evolution and Tropical Australia

Word Count: 12343

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