Sarah\u27s Ground

Left of center Outside looking in at epochs of American history Ann Rinaldi, who has had a successful, award-laden career as a writer of historical fiction for young adults, has said she never writes with a specific audience or age group in mind, but rather that she simply write...

How I Found the Strong:A Novel of the Civil War

Traditional tale for young readers Moral Mississippi boy sets his slave free Told from the traditional point of view of the young boy not old enough to go to war but old enough to long for the adventure, this fast moving first novel touches about every facet of the usual Civil Wa...

Fields of Fury: The American Civil War

Battle primer Scholar reaches out to young audience There can be little doubt with regard to James M. McPherson\u27s rank as a Civil War scholar; he ranks among the very best. Aside from his seminal one volume history of the war, Battle Cry of Freedom, a partial list of his l...

Marine: America the Raped: The Engineering Mentality and the Devastation of a Continent

A Review of America the Raped: The Engineering Mentality and the Devastation of a Continent by Gene Marin

John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

Cultural context Viewing Brown from the North and South Shortly after John Brown\u27s raid at Harpers Ferry, Salmon P. Chase, later to become President Lincoln\u27s Secretary of the Treasury, wrote to the editor of the Cincinnati Gazete: Poor old man! How sadly misled by his own...

Comparing fungal communities in Tsuga heterophylla seedling roots across nurse log decay stages and the forest floor

Nurse logs are fallen, decaying trees that have been shown to facilitate the survival, establishment, and growth of tree seedlings, therefore making vital contributions to forest regeneration. Plant-fungi interactions may play a role in influencing seedling survival across nurse log decay and the forest floor. We sought to examine how fungal communities in seedling roots change between nurse logs and forest floor as well as across nurse log decay stages. To study this, we collected western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) seedlings (5-10 cm) from nurse logs of each decay stage and the forest floor at three field sites on the Olympic Peninsula, WA. We then removed the root tips and sent them to Jonah Ventures lab for DNA extraction, PCR, and next generation sequencing. We preliminarily categorized fungal OTUs into ecological roles using the FunGuild database and literature search. Fungal community composition varied across substrates with forest floor composition being most similar to nurse log decay stage 3 and least similar to nurse log decay stage 1. No significant trend emerged across substrates for mycorrhizal and pathogenic OTUs, however saprotrophic OTUs increased in nurse logs of decay stages 1 and 2. Future analyses and further literature search may reveal a pattern in mycorrhizal and pathogenic OTUs, specifically when looking into T. heterophylla-specific symbionts and when incorporating distance to parent tree data. Overall, fungal communities change across nurse log decay and the forest floor, which could influence patterns of seedling abundance across these substrates