Publications by authors named "Eric Dexter"

Crabs are a large subtaxon of the Arthropoda, the most diverse and species-rich metazoan group. Several outstanding questions remain regarding crab diversification, including about the genomic capacitors of physiological and morphological adaptation, that cannot be answered with available genomic resources. Physiologically and ecologically diverse Anomuran porcelain crabs offer a valuable model for investigating these questions and hence genomic resources of these crabs would be particularly useful.

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Article Synopsis
  • Understanding the genomic aspects of infectious diseases is crucial for co-evolution theory and has implications in healthcare, agriculture, and epidemiology.
  • Traditional models predict that specific host and parasite genotypes are linked in infection and resistance, but there's been limited evidence of this in nature.
  • The study found significant genomic associations between host and parasite genomes in Daphnia magna and Pasteuria ramosa, demonstrating evidence of co-evolution supported by lab trials linking phenotype to genotype.
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Although parasite-mediated selection is a major driver of host evolution, its influence on genetic variation for parasite resistance is not yet well understood. We monitored resistance in a large population of the planktonic crustacean over 8 years, as it underwent yearly epidemics of the bacterial pathogen . We observed cyclic dynamics of resistance: Resistance increased throughout the epidemics, but susceptibility was restored each spring when hosts hatched from sexual resting stages.

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The lower Columbia River (Washington and Oregon, USA) has been heavily invaded by a large number of planktonic organisms including the invasive copepod Pseudodiaptomus forbesi and the planktonic juveniles of the invasive clam, Corbicula fluminea. In order to assess the ecological impacts of these highly abundant invaders, we developed a multivariate auto-regressive (MAR) model of food web dynamics based upon a 12-year time-series of plankton community and environmental data from the Columbia River. Our model results indicate that plankton communities in the lower Columbia River are strongly impacted by the copepod P.

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We present a comprehensive survey of the scientific literature pertaining to non-indigenous and invasive zooplankton published across the first decades of the twenty-first century (i.e., 2000-2018).

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