Influences of forested and grassland vegetation on late Quaternary ecosystem development as recorded in lacustrine sediments

Geosphere-biosphere interactions are ubiquitous features of the Earth surface, yet the development of interactions between newly exposed lithologic surfaces and colonizing plants during primary succession after glaciation are lacking temporal detail. To assess the nature, rate, and magnitude of vegetation influence on parent material and sediment delivery, we analyzed ecosystem and geochemical proxies from lacustrine sediment cores at a grassland site and a forested site in the northern United States. Over time, terrigenous inputs declined at both sites, with increasing amounts of organic inputs toward present. The similarities between sites were striking given that the grassland sequence began in the Early Holocene, and the forested sequence began after the last glacial maximum. Multiple mechanisms of chemical weathering, hydrologic transport, and changes in source material potentially contribute to this pattern. Although there were strong links between vegetation composition and nitrogen cycling at each site, it appears that changes in forest type, or from oak woodland to grassland, did not exert a large influence on elemental (K, Ti, Si, Ca, Fe, Mn, and S) abundance in the sedimentary sequences. Rather, other factors in the catchment-lake system determined the temporal sequence of elemental abundance

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

The Ecology and Conservation of an Urban Karst Subterranean Estuary

Sulphur Springs is an artesian spring and part of the limestone karst topography of metropolitan Tampa, Florida, USA. Underlying this spring is an extensive cave system that hosts saltwater vents and conspicuous microbial biofilm communities. For decades, water from Sulphur Springs has been extracted and used to supplement public water supply and dry season flows in the Hillsborough River Estuary. This dissertation describes research conducted at Sulphur Springs to determine the impacts of urban land use on the underlying cave and downstream estuary ecosystems, and presents the use of this system as a model to fill certain ecological knowledge gaps. Techniques from a wide array of disciplines were used to address these questions, such as molecular biology, stable isotope geochemistry, hydrogeology, and multivariate statistics. The introduction provides a brief background about the major anthropogenic changes faced by groundwater-dependent ecosystems. The first chapter presents evidence for a conceptual model that explains how seawater intrusion accelerated by groundwater extraction has occurred at Sulphur Springs. The second chapter addresses knowledge gaps in the concepts behind the use of microbial indicators in groundwater, and applies the microbial indicator tool to inform management strategies at Sulphur Springs. The third chapter demonstrates how the use of extracted groundwater to supplement riverine discharge impacts carbon fluxes in estuaries, and how groundwater extraction from karst springs can change underlying cave ecosystems. The concluding remarks propose future directions for ecological research in karst subterranean estuaries and coastal landscapes. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates how anthropogenic activity can modify coastal groundwater and estuary ecosystems, and emphasizes how local management strategies are causing fundamental ecological change at Sulphur Springs