Rebecca Clement, PhD

Rebecca Clement, PhD

SCINET ORISE Postdoctoral Fellow, USDA-ARS, Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Publications

Wood traits explain microbial but not termite-driven decay in Australian tropical rainforest and savanna.

Published in Journal of Ecology, 2023

In the tropics, termites are imortant contributors to decomposition, but we don’t know a lot about how much they contribute compared to microbes or fungi. We deployed wood across a rainfall gradient of habitat types in North Queensland Australia and measured wood decay in blocks where termites were or were not allowed. Part of the difference in decay rates across habitats can be explained by wood traits.

Recommended citation: Law, Stephanie, Habacuc Flores‐Moreno, Alexander W. Cheesman, Rebecca Clement, Marc Rosenfield, Abbey Yatsko, Lucas A. Cernusak et al. "Wood traits explain microbial but not termite‐driven decay in Australian tropical rainforest and savanna." Journal of Ecology 111, no. 5 (2023): 982-993. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.14090.

Evolution and Biogeographic History of Rubyspot Damselflies (Hetaerininae: Calopterygidae: Odonata).

Published in Diversity, 2022

Rubyspot damselflies are beautiful Calopterygids that often have red spots on their wings. Led by the brilliant Sam Standring with some top-notch collaborators, we built a phylogeny of this genus and its sister group Mnesarete. We found that the rubyspot was lost four times and that the ancestors of this group were forest-dwellers.

Recommended citation: Standring, S.; Sánchez-Herrera, M.; Guillermo-Ferreira, R.;Ware, J.L.; Vega-Sánchez, Y.M.; Clement, R.;Drury, J.P.; Grether, G.F.; González-Rodríguez, A.; Mendoza-Cuenca, L.; et al. Evolution and Biogeographic History of Rubyspot Damselflies (Hetaerininae: Calopterygidae: Odonata). Diversity 2022, 14, 757. https://doi.org/10.3390/d14090757 https://doi.org/10.3390/d14090757

Epidemiological associations with genomic variation in SARS-CoV-2.

Published in Scientific Reports, 2021

Our ability to effectively link genomic variation in viruses to epidemiological information is hindered by analytical limitations in current methodologies to test such associations. Here we apply our novel multi-resolution clustering approach for identifying variable CoV genomic regions and linking these regions to epidemiological factors.

Recommended citation: Rahnavard, A., Dawson, T., Clement, R. et al. (2021). Epidemiological associations with genomic variation in SARS-CoV-2. Sci Rep 11, 23023. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02548-w.

Phylogeny , migration and geographic range size evolution of Anax dragonflies (Anisoptera: Aeshnidae).

Published in Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2021

Here we present the first dated, species-level, multigene, molecular phylogeny for Anax dragonflies to test generic and species-limits, as well as the evolution of migration and range size.

Recommended citation: Clement, R.A., Saxton, N.A., Standring, S., Arnold, P.R., Johnson, K.K, Bybee, D.R., Bybee, S.M. (2021). Phylogeny , migration and geographic range size evolution of Anax dragonflies (Anisoptera: Aeshnidae). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlab046

Assessing the Australian termite diversity anomaly: how habitat and rainfall affect termite assemblages.

Published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2021

Termites are important ecosystem engineers in tropical habitats, with different feeding groups able to decompose wood, grass, litter, and soil organic matter. In most tropical regions, termite abundance and species diversity are assumed to increase with rainfall, with highest levels found in rainforests. However, in the Australian tropics, this pattern is thought to be reversed, with lower species richness and termite abundance found in rainforest than drier habitats. The potential mechanisms underlying this pattern remain unclear. We compared termite assemblages (abundance, activity, diversity, and feeding group composition) across five sites along a precipitation gradient in tropical North Queensland.

Recommended citation: Clement, R.A., H. Flores-Moreno, L.A. Cernusak, A.W. Cheesman, A.R. Yatsko, S. Allison, P. Eggleton, A.E. Zanne. (2021). Assessing the Australian termite diversity anomaly: how habitat and rainfall affect termite assemblages. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 9: 237. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.657444 https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.657444

Insights Into the Resistome of Bovine Clinical Mastitis Microbiome, a Key Factor in Disease Complication.

Published in Frontiers in Microbiology, 2020

Bovine clinical mastitis (CM) is one of the most prevalent diseases caused by a wide range of resident microbes. The emergence of antimicrobial resistance in CM bacteria is well-known, however, the genomic resistance composition (the resistome) at the microbiome-level is not well characterized. In this study, we applied whole metagenome sequencing (WMS) to characterize the resistome of the CM microbiome, focusing on antibiotics and metals resistance, biofilm formation (BF), and quorum sensing (QS) along with in vitro resistance assays of six selected pathogens isolated from the same CM samples.

Recommended citation: Hoque, M. N., Istiaq, A., Clement, R. A., Gibson, K. M., Saha, O., Islam, O. K., ... Hossain, M. A. (2020). Insights Into the Resistome of Bovine Clinical Mastitis Microbiome, a Key Factor in Disease Complication. Frontiers in Microbiology, 11, 860. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00860 https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00860

Metagenomic deep sequencing reveals association of microbiome signature with functional biases in bovine mastitis.

Published in Scientific Reports, 2019

Milk microbiomes significantly influence the pathophysiology of bovine mastitis. To assess the association between microbiome diversity and bovine mastitis, we compared the microbiome of clinical mastitis (CM, n = 14) and healthy (H, n = 7) milk samples through deep whole metagenome sequencing (WMS).

Recommended citation: Hoque, M. N., Istiaq, A., Clement, R. A., Sultana, M., Crandall, K. A., Siddiki, A. Z., Hossain, M. A. (2019). Metagenomic deep sequencing reveals association of microbiome signature with functional biases in bovine mastitis. Scientific Reports, (August), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49468-4 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49468-4

Fly family diversity shows evidence of livestock grazing pressure in Mongolia (Insecta: Diptera)

Published in Journal of Insect Conservation, 2018

In Mongolia, commercial grazing is rapidly replacing traditional nomadic browsing. To understand how these changes affect insect biodiversity, I used statistical computing in R to compare fly diversity (>17,000 flies from 132 sites) across a livestock grazing gradient. My analysis suggested that in heavily grazed areas, fly family diversity is lower than in lightly grazed areas. This disparity pointed to several families as grazing disturbance bioindicators.

Recommended citation: Clement R.A., Frandsen P.B., Mcknight T., Nelson C.R. (2018). Fly family diversity shows evidence of livestock grazing pressure in Mongolia (Insecta: Diptera). J. Insect Conserv. 22:0. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-018-0056-x