Joel K. Abraham is an American ecologist and professor at California State University Fullerton. [1] His work focuses on how plant traits and competition shape invasion success by non-native plant species in California.
Joel K. Abraham is an American ecologist and professor at California State University Fullerton. [1] His work focuses on how plant traits and competition shape invasion success by non-native plant species in California.
Abraham completed his undergraduate degree at Howard University in 2000 and his PhD at University of California Berkeley. [2] He conducted his PhD work with Wayne Sousa and Carla D’Antonio, producing a dissertation titled “On the Importance of Plant Phenology and Resource Use in the Invasion of California Coastal Grasslands”. [3] His dissertation notably contains a recipe for one of his study species (fennel). [3] Abraham is currently an associate professor at California State University Fullerton. [1] In addition to the topics of plant traits and invasion, Abraham's research also spans urban agriculture and biology education, [1] and he served as the science consultant on the children's book “The Answer is Armadillos”. [4]
Chaparral is a shrubland plant community found primarily in the U.S. state of California, in southern Oregon, and in the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean climate and infrequent, high-intensity crown fires. Chaparral features summer-drought-tolerant plants with hard sclerophyllous evergreen leaves, as contrasted with the associated soft-leaved, drought-deciduous, scrub community of coastal sage scrub, found often on drier, southern facing slopes within the chaparral biome. Three other closely related chaparral shrubland systems occur in central Arizona, western Texas, and along the eastern side of central Mexico's mountain chains (mexical), all having summer rains in contrast to the Mediterranean climate of other chaparral formations. Chaparral comprises 9% of the California's wildland vegetation and contains 20% of its plant species. The name comes from the Spanish word chaparro, which translates to "place of the scrub oak".
A meadow is an open habitat, or field, vegetated by grasses, herbs, and other non-woody plants. Trees or shrubs may sparsely populate meadows, as long as these areas maintain an open character. Meadows may be naturally occurring or artificially created from cleared shrub or woodland. They can occur naturally under favourable conditions, but they are often maintained by humans for the production of hay, fodder, or livestock. Meadow habitats, as a group, are characterized as "semi-natural grasslands", meaning that they are largely composed of species native to the region, with only limited human intervention.
Allelopathy is a biological phenomenon by which an organism produces one or more biochemicals that influence the germination, growth, survival, and reproduction of other organisms. These biochemicals are known as allelochemicals and can have beneficial or detrimental effects on the target organisms and the community. Allelopathy is often used narrowly to describe chemically-mediated competition between plants, however, it is sometimes defined more broadly as chemically-mediated competition between any type of organisms. Allelochemicals are a subset of secondary metabolites, which are not directly required for metabolism of the allelopathic organism.
George Ledyard Stebbins Jr. was an American botanist and geneticist who is widely regarded as one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. Stebbins received his Ph.D. in botany from Harvard University in 1931. He went on to the University of California, Berkeley, where his work with E. B. Babcock on the genetic evolution of plant species, and his association with a group of evolutionary biologists known as the Bay Area Biosystematists, led him to develop a comprehensive synthesis of plant evolution incorporating genetics.
California coastal prairie, also known as northern coastal grassland, is a grassland plant community of California and Oregon in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. It is found along the Pacific Coast, from as far south as Los Angeles in Southern California up into southern Oregon.
Animal Diversity Web (ADW) is an online database that collects the natural history, classification, species characteristics, conservation biology, and distribution information on thousands of species of animals. The website includes thousands of photographs, hundreds of sound clips, and a virtual museum.
George David Tilman, ForMemRS, is an American ecologist. He is Regents Professor and McKnight Presidential Chair in Ecology at the University of Minnesota, as well as an instructor in Conservation Biology; Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior; and Microbial Ecology. He is director of the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve long-term ecological research station. Tilman is also a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.
Joel Ephraim Cohen is a mathematical biologist. He is currently Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of Populations at the Rockefeller University in New York City and at the Earth Institute of Columbia University, where he holds a joint appointment in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, and the School of International and Public Affairs. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Wayne Philip Sousa is a well-known biologist and ecologist. He works at the University of California, Berkeley as a professor and chair of the Department of Integrative Biology. His research in community ecology has been in two broad areas: the role of disturbance in structuring natural communities and the ecology of host-parasite interactions. In his lab, students work alongside Sousa on research topics such as mangrove forest gap regeneration, the demographics of intertidal algae in California, plant invasions in coastal California grasslands, and rainforest seedlings in Ecuador.
Samuel Joseph McNaughton is an American ecologist and professor at Syracuse University. He received his Ph.D. at University of Texas-Austin in 1964, and was tenured to Syracuse University in 1966.
Avena barbata is a species of wild oat known by the common name slender wild oat. It has edible seeds. It is a diploidized autotetraploid grass (2n=4x=28). Its diploid ancestors are A. hirtula Lag. and A. wiestii Steud (2n=2x=14), which are considered Mediterranean and desert ecotypes, respectively, comprising a single species. A westie and A. hirtula are widespread in the Mediterranean Basin, growing in mixed stands with A. barbata, though they are difficult to tell apart.
Evan Siemann is a professor in the Biosciences Department at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He received his AB from Cornell University in 1990 and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1997. The focus of his research has been investigating how local environmental factors interact with post-invasion adaptation to determine the likelihood and severity of Chinese tallow tree invasions into East Texas coastal prairie, mesic forests, and floodplain forests. The results of this research have been highlighted in Science Daily, Environmental News Service, and The Sciences. He has also recently begun to explore the ecosystem level impacts of exotic tree invasions into coastal prairies. His research group is also engaged in a number of applied research projects related to controlling exotic plant and animal invasions into Texas ecosystems.
The 85 acre Robert J. Bernard Biological Field Station (BFS) is located on the north side of Foothill Boulevard between College Avenue and Mills Avenue in Claremont, California. The BFS provides facilities and ecological communities for high-quality teaching and research in biological, environmental, and other sciences to the students, faculty, and staff of the Claremont Colleges. It may also be used by members of other academic institutions and by public groups for educational purposes. The BFS is a member of the Organization of Biological Field Stations (OBFS). It was named after Claremont Colleges president Robert J. Bernard.
Flowering synchrony is the amount of overlap between flowering periods of plants in their mating season compared to what would be expected to occur randomly under given environmental conditions. A population which is flowering synchronously has more plants flowering at the same time than would be expected to occur randomly. A population which is flowering asynchronously has fewer plants flowering at the same time than would be expected randomly. Flowering synchrony can describe synchrony of flowering periods within a year, across years, and across species in a community. There are fitness benefits and disadvantages to synchronized flowering, and it is a widespread phenomenon across pollination syndromes.
Erika S. Zavaleta is an American professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Zavaleta is recognized for her research focusing on topics including plant community ecology, conservation practices for terrestrial ecosystems, and impacts of community dynamics on ecosystem functions.
Elizabeth T. Borer is an American ecologist and a Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota.
Susan Patricia Harrison is a professor of ecology at the University of California, Davis who works on the dynamics of natural populations and ecological diversity. She is a fellow of the Ecological Society of America and the California Academy of Sciences. She has previously served as vice president of the American Society of Naturalists. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
Ingrid C. "Indy" Burke is the Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. Dean at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She is the first female dean in the school's 116 year history. Her area of research is ecosystem ecology with a primary focus on carbon cycling and nitrogen cycling in semi-arid rangeland ecosystems. She teaches on subjects relating to ecosystem ecology, and biogeochemistry.
John Norton Thompson is an American evolutionary biologist.
Ann Kiku Sakai is a plant biologist at the University of California, Irvine known for her work on plant breeding and speciation. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
  | This article about a biologist from the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
