Municipal Compost Public Health, Waste Management, and Urban Agriculture: A Decadal Study of Fugitive Pb in City of Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Compostable materials constitute roughly half of waste generated globally, but only 5% of waste is actually processed through composting, suggesting that expanding compost programs may be an effective way to process waste. Compostable waste, if properly collected and processed, has value-added end use options including: residential and park landscaping, remediation of brownfield sites, and as growing media in urban agriculture (UA). Since 2001, our lab has partnered with The Food Project, a non-profit focused on youth leadership development through urban farming.

Feet first: Adaptive growth in magellanic penguin chicks.

Growing animals should allocate their limited resources in ways that maximize survival. Seabird chicks must balance the growth of features and fat reserves needed to survive on land with those needed to successfully fledge and survive at sea. We used a large, 34-year dataset to examine energy allocation in Magellanic penguin chicks.

Do different rates of gene flow underlie variation in phenotypic and phenological clines in a montane grasshopper community?

Species responses to environmental change are likely to depend on existing genetic and phenotypic variation, as well as evolutionary potential. A key challenge is to determine whether gene flow might facilitate or impede genomic divergence among populations responding to environmental change, and if emergent phenotypic variation is dependent on gene flow rates. A general expectation is that patterns of genetic differentiation in a set of codistributed species reflect differences in dispersal ability.

Auxin promotion of seedling growth via ARF5 is dependent on the brassinosteroid-regulated transcription factors BES1 and BEH4.

Seedlings must continually calibrate their growth in response to the environment. Auxin and brassinosteroids (BRs) are plant hormones that work together to control growth responses during photomorphogenesis. We used our previous analysis of promoter architecture in an auxin and BR target gene to guide our investigation into the broader molecular bases and biological relevance of transcriptional co-regulation by these hormones.

How do phenology, plasticity, and evolution determine the fitness consequences of climate change for montane butterflies?

Species have responded to climate change via seasonal (phenological) shifts, morphological plasticity, and evolutionary adaptation, but how these responses contribute to changes and variation in population fitness are poorly understood. We assess the interactions and relative importance of these responses for fitness in a montane butterfly, , along an elevational gradient. Because environmental temperatures affect developmental rates of each life stage, populations along the gradients differ in phenological timing and the number of generations each year.

Reviewing research priorities in weed ecology, evolution and management: a horizon scan.

Weedy plants pose a major threat to food security, biodiversity, ecosystem services and consequently to human health and wellbeing. However, many currently used weed management approaches are increasingly unsustainable. To address this knowledge and practice gap, in June 2014, 35 weed and invasion ecologists, weed scientists, evolutionary biologists and social scientists convened a workshop to explore current and future perspectives and approaches in weed ecology and management.