| Title | Natural Chimerism in the Invasive Colonial Ascidian Didemnum vexillum |
| Publication Type | Thesis |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Authors | Weinberg, Rachel Beth |
| Secondary Title | Dept. of Biology, Marine Biology |
| Volume | M.S. |
| Pagination | 63 p. |
| University | San Francisco State University |
| City | San Francisco, Ca. |
| Call Number | OSU Libraries: Digital Open Access |
| Keywords | aquatic invertebrates, genetics, introduced species, molecular biology, sea vomit = Didemnum vexillum, taxonomy, tunicates, Umpqua River estuary, Umpqua triangle, Winchester Bay |
| Notes | “Colonial, asexually reproducing organisms are typically treated as genetically homogenous entities composed of clonal units. However, processes such as fusion and somatic mutation may lead to the integration of multiple genetic lines in a single physiologically continuous organism. This state, known as chimerism, has been documented in a broad range of sessile modular taxa, including plants, fungi, slime molds, and colonial metazoans such as ascidians.” (from the Abstract) This thesis describes a process to quantify how much chimerism was present in a given colony. Twenty tunicate colonies were studied in Winchester Bay, and fifteen colonies in Half Moon Bay, California. The Umpqua River estuary colonies had about 70% chimerism, which is the highest percentage of chimerism identified in colonies studied to date. |
| URL | https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/concern/theses/2227mr486 |
