Research Data and Materials (Biological Sciences)

2024-04-02

Holden, Emily M, Cahill, James F Jr.

Plant-plant interactions, often studied in the context of plant traits, are considered crucial assembly mechanisms for plant communities and offer insights into how neighbors affect growth. Three key questions regarding these interactions have theoretical importance but limited empirical...

2024-05-01

Holden, Emily M, Salimbayeva, Karina, Brown, Charlotte, Stotz, Gisela C., Cahill, James F.

Many pathways of invasion have been posited, but ecologists lack an experimental framework to identify which mechanisms are dominant in a given invasion scenario. Plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) are one such mechanism that tend to initially facilitate, but over time attenuate, invasive species’...

2024-05-17

Holden, Emily M., Salimbayeva, Karina, Brown, Charlotte, Stotz, Gisela C., Cahill, James F.

Many pathways of invasion have been posited, but ecologists lack an experimental framework to identify which mechanisms are dominant in a given invasion scenario. Plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) are one such mechanism that tend to initially facilitate, but over time attenuate, invasive species’...

2021-08-13

Aragones Suarez P, Leys SP

The timing of early animal evolution remains one of the biggest conundrums in biology. Molecular data suggest Porifera diverged from the metazoan lineage some 800 Ma to 650 Ma, which contrasts with the earliest widely accepted fossils of sponges at 535 Ma. However, the lack of criteria by which...

2019-03-25

Nathan Grant, Sally Leys

The largest known glass sponge reefs in Canada are within the Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound Glass Sponge Reefs Marine Protected Area (HSQCS-MPA). However, human activities outside the core MPA boundaries, such as trawling, can create plumes of suspended sediments capable of travelling...

2018-02-09

Sally Leys, Nathan Grant

Bottom-contact trawling generates large, moving clouds of suspended sediments that can alter the behaviour of organisms adjacent to trawl paths. While increased suspended sediment concentrations (SSCs) are known to cause glass sponges to arrest filtration in lab studies, the response of sponges...

2021-08-10

Matveev, E, Leys SP, Yahel G, Kahn AS, Aragones P, Ludeman D, Eerkes-Medrano D

How flow moves through porous structures like sponges is a fluid dynamic problem that has challenged physical and biological scientists. Sponges possess biological pump cells that are known to drive water flow, and yet their porous bodies have often been proposed to take advantage of ambient...

2017

Chu, Jackson WF, Kahn, Amanda S, Leys, Sally P

Sponges link the microbial loop with benthic communities by feeding on bacteria. Glass sponge reefs on the continental shelf of western Canada have extremely high grazing rates, consuming seven times more particulate carbon than can be supplied by vertical flux alone. Unlike many sponges, the...

2020-01-07

Kahn, Amanda S., Pennelly, Clark W., McGill, Paul R., Leys, Sally P.

Time-lapse photography provides a view of the seafloor at timescales that make it possible to recognize behaviors and activity of often slow-moving abyssal fauna. Most behavioral studies have focused on mobile animals; sessile benthic fauna have largely been overlooked. We combed through 30 years...

2012-10-25

Sacher, Jessica C.

Bacterial viruses (phages) are ubiquitous in the environment and are believed to target every bacterial species. Phages utilize receptor binding proteins (RBPs) to bind specifically to their host cell surface. The Campylobacter jejuni phage NCTC 12673 RBP and its capsular polysaccharide (CPS)...