Post-fire seeding on Wyoming big sagebrush ecological sites: regression analyses of seeded nonnative and native species densities.

Since the mid-1980s, sagebrush rangelands in the Great Basin of the United States have experienced more frequent and larger wildfires. These fires affect livestock forage, the sagebrush/grasses/forbs mosaic that is important for many wildlife species (e.g., the greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus)), post-fire flammability and fire frequency. When a sagebrush, especially a Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis (Beetle & A. Young)), dominated area largely devoid of herbaceous perennials burns, it often transitions to an annual dominated and highly flammable plant community that thereafter excludes sagebrush and native perennials. Considerable effort is devoted to revegetating rangeland following fire, but to date there has been very little analysis of the factors that lead to the success of this revegetation. This paper utilizes a revegetation monitoring dataset to examine the densities of three key types of vegetation, specifically nonnative seeded grasses, nonnative seeded forbs, and native Wyoming big sagebrush, at several points in time following seeding. We find that unlike forbs, increasing the seeding rates for grasses does not appear to increase their density (at least for the sites and seeding rates we examined). Also, seeding Wyoming big sagebrush increases its density with time since fire. Seeding of grasses and forbs is less successful at locations that were dominated primarily by annual grasses (cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.)), and devoid of shrubs, prior to wildfire. This supports the hypothesis of a "closing window of opportunity" for seeding at locations that burned sagebrush for the first time in recent history.

Withdrawal-like behavior in planarians is dependent on drug exposure duration.

Planarians display a concentration-related reduction in locomotor activity following their spontaneous withdrawal from opioids, cannabinoids, stimulants and benzodiazepines. This suggests that planarians display a withdrawal-like behavior that can be quantified as a reduction in locomotor activity. Because withdrawal-like behavior in previous studies has been quantified only following the cessation of a 60-min drug exposure, it is unclear whether the withdrawal response varies with drug exposure duration. Therefore, the goal of this study is to determine if the duration of drug exposure (0, 5, 15, 30, 45, 60min and 24h) to three different drugs - methamphetamine, cocaine and caffeine - affects the magnitude of withdrawal-like behavior (i.e., reduced locomotor activity) in planarians. Experiments revealed that methamphetamine (10microM) produced significant withdrawal-like behavior regardless of the exposure time (P<0.05). An exposure time of only 5min resulted in a significant reduction in locomotor activity. The peak effect, although occurring following a 24-h exposure, was only slightly greater than that caused by a 30-min exposure. For cocaine (10microM), a longer exposure time (15min) was required for the manifestation of significant withdrawal-like behavior. The peak cocaine effect was observed following a 24-h exposure. Caffeine (10microM) did not produce significant changes in locomotor activity during withdrawal or alter locomotor activity during acute exposure. The present results suggest that the magnitude of withdrawal-like behavior in planarians is dependent on both the duration and type of drug exposure, and that planarians do not display withdrawal to caffeine.