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Helen Kurkjian
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  • Metapopulation Microcosm Plate
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Research

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Metapopulation Microcosm Plate
MMPs are devices which resemble 96-well microtiter plates but with corridors connecting the wells in any configuration desired to culture microorganisms in 96-subpopulation metapopulations.
    
What kinds of questions can MMPs be used to address?
Where can I find files to make my own MMPs?
Where can I find instructions to make my own MMPs?
  

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Metapopulation Connectivity and Persistence in Pseudomonas syringae

Part of my dissertation work uses MMPs to manipulate the degree distribution corridors in bacterial metapopulations to explore how this affects a population's ability to persist and recover from disturbance.

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Nitrogen Patch Size and Root Branching

I'm leading a collaborative project with the rest of the Simms Lab to investigate how the size of nitrogen patches affects the frequency and orientation of root branching and the position of root nodules.



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Population Viability Analysis of the Lassics Lupine (Lupinus constancei)

My master's work at Humboldt State University in the Jules Lab (Dept of Biology) was a population viability analysis of the Lassics lupine, an extremely rare plant endemic to Humboldt and Trinity Counties in northern California.  We found that without continued management interventions, seed predation by rodents has the potential to drive this species to extinction.

Check out the paper, my master's thesis, and the data package!

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  • Metapopulation Microcosm Plate
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