The Black Box of Plant Demography: Seed Germination and Pathogens

I owe an incredible debt of gratitude to Dr. Bitty Roy, without whom this project never would have begun.The advice, guidance, and support given continues to be invaluable.I would also like to thank Tiffany Thornton, who was my partner on this project for all the lab work, and the primary reason the breadth and timeliness of data collection and fungal identification was as extensive and punctual as it was.Zoe Wender also deserves many thanks for all of her help in setting up petri dishes for D. californica seeds.Further thanks to Allison Ludden, whose help with culturing saved much time and many headaches.Dr. Ashley Shaw's recommendations for data visualization and analysis were also extremely helpful, and many of the graphs would not have ended up as complete as they were without Graham Bailes, whose research itself also proved invaluable.Additional thanks are due to my secondary advisor Dr.Lauren Hallett, whose expertise on analysis and data visualization