Long-term population demography of Trillium recurvatum on loess bluffs in western Tennessee, USA.

Background And Aims: Understanding the demography of long-lived clonal herbs, with their extreme modularity, requires knowledge of both their short- and long-term survival and ramet growth patterns. The primary objective of this study was to understand the dynamics of a clonal forest herb, Trillium recurvatum, by examining temporal and small-scale demographic patterns. We hypothesized: (i) there would be more variability in the juvenile age class compared with non-flowering adult and flowering adult classes due to year-to-year fluctuations in recruitment; (ii) rates of population growth (λ) and increase (r) would be highest in non-flowering ramets due to a combination of transitions from the juvenile stage and reversions from flowering adults; and (iii) inter-ramet distances would be most variable between flowering and juvenile ramets due to a combination of clonal growth, seed dispersal by ants and ramet death over time.

Using wildlife as receptor species: a landscape approach to ecological risk assessment.

To assist risk assessors at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS), a Geographic Information System (GIS) application was developed to provide relevant information about specific receptor species of resident wildlife that can be used for ecological risk assessment. Information was obtained from an extensive literature review of publications and reports on vertebrate- and contaminant-related research since 1954 and linked to a GIS. Although this GIS is a useful tool for risk assessors because the data quality is high, it does not describe the species' site-wide spatial distribution or life history, which may be crucial when developing a risk assessment.