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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
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The Impact Of Temperature On The Early Stages Of The Development Of The Body Axis In The Model Species Astyanax Mexicanus (Teleostei: Characidae), Sara Mohammad Alharbi
The Impact Of Temperature On The Early Stages Of The Development Of The Body Axis In The Model Species Astyanax Mexicanus (Teleostei: Characidae), Sara Mohammad Alharbi
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Environmental fluctuations can change the phenotypic traits of ectotherms. Ectotherms such as fishes are very susceptible to changes in temperature. Recent studies on adults of the Mexican tetra, Astyanax mexicanus, indicate that variation in temperature during development significantly impacts vertebral number and body shape. Since vertebral number and somite number are related, I examined whether temperature significantly impacts somitogenesis and the early development of the body axis in this species. Fertilized eggs of the surface form of lab-reared Astyanax mexicanus were subjected to temperature treatments of 20°C, 24°C, and 28°C, and fixed hourly as they developed until they hatched. Embryos …
Songbird Use Of Problem-Solving Feeders In Urban And Rural Areas, Kayce Miller
Songbird Use Of Problem-Solving Feeders In Urban And Rural Areas, Kayce Miller
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Behavioral flexibility is important for animals to adapt to novel situations in their environment. It has been suggested that birds living in complex environments (e.g., urban areas) should be more flexible than conspecifics in less complex environments. Birds are a particularly well studied group, where novel foraging problems are used to assess flexibility and problem-solving performance of urban and rural animals of the same species; however, this is most frequently done in a lab setting with wild-caught birds originating from different habitats. Using a field-based method to test problem-solving performance should give additional insight into other factors influencing birds’ flexibility. …
Developing A Transfection Method For Didymium Iridis, Uriel Adolfo Baray
Developing A Transfection Method For Didymium Iridis, Uriel Adolfo Baray
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
The plasmodial slime mold and member of Mycetozoa, Didymium iridis, has been studied in a variety of contexts such as RNA editing (Traphagen et al., 2010; Hendrickson and Silliker, 2010a; Hendrickson and Silliker, 2010b), mitochondrial inheritance (Silliker et al., 2002), biological speciation (Betterley and Collins, 1983; Clark et al., 1991) and mating competency (Shipley and Holt, 1982). Further studies are hindered by the lack of a transfection protocol, which would allow for gene manipulation in D. iridis (hereafter Didymium). Transfection methods developed in the related slime molds, Physarum polycephalum (Burland et al., 1993) and Dictyostelium discoideum (Fey et al., 1995; …
Zygote Gene Expression And Plasmodial Development In Didymium Iridis, Sean Schaefer
Zygote Gene Expression And Plasmodial Development In Didymium Iridis, Sean Schaefer
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Didymium iridis is a cosmopolitan species of plasmodial slime mold consisting of two distinct life stages. Haploid amoebae and diploid plasmodia feed on microscopic organisms such as bacteria and fungi through phagocytosis. Sexually compatible haploid amoebae act as gametes which when fused embark on an irreversible developmental change resulting in a diploid zygote. The zygote can undergo closed mitosis resulting in a multinucleated plasmodium. Little is known about changes in gene expression during this developmental transition. Our principal goal in this study was to provide a comprehensive list of genes likely to be involved in plasmodial development. We performed suppressive …
Comparative Brain Anatomy Of Lamniform Sharks (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes) And Its Implications To Function, Behavioral Ecology, And Evolution, Francesco Guzzo
Comparative Brain Anatomy Of Lamniform Sharks (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes) And Its Implications To Function, Behavioral Ecology, And Evolution, Francesco Guzzo
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Understanding the diversity of brain morphology is important to understand the evolution of cognitive ability and how ecology and phylogeny have influenced the variation in brain complexity. I examined the morphological variation of the brain in the shark order Lamniformes based on museum specimens and literature. Where I illustrate a wide range of morphological diversity in lamniform brains, my study shows that there is a strong positive correlation between brain size and body size that sharks with a larger brain tend to have a more foliated cerebellum, but that the body weight over brain weight did not correlate with cerebellar …
Integument-Based Inferences On The Swimming Ability And Prey Hunting Strategy Of The Bigeye Thresher Shark, Alopias Superciliosus (Lamniformes: Alopiidae), Joseph Aaron Frumkin
Integument-Based Inferences On The Swimming Ability And Prey Hunting Strategy Of The Bigeye Thresher Shark, Alopias Superciliosus (Lamniformes: Alopiidae), Joseph Aaron Frumkin
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Alopias is a group of lamniform sharks characterized by a highly elongate caudal fin with three known extant species: A. pelagicus (pelagic thresher shark), A. superciliosus (bigeye thresher shark), and A. vulpinus (common thresher shark). Alopias pelagicus and A. vulpinus are considered fast swimmers and use their caudal fin to hunt for small schooling fish by stunning them, but the feeding behavior has never been directly observed for A. superciliosus. Under the ecomorphological framework, I examined the following four integumentary variables of selected fast swimming (e.g., A. pelagicus, A. vulpinus, and Lamna) and slow swimming (e.g., Mitsukurina and Megachasma) lamniform …
A New Pachyrhizodontid Fish (Actinopterygii: Teleostei) From The Tarrant Formation (Cenomanian) Of The Upper Cretaceous Eagle Ford Group Of Texas, U.S.A., Maxwell G. London
A New Pachyrhizodontid Fish (Actinopterygii: Teleostei) From The Tarrant Formation (Cenomanian) Of The Upper Cretaceous Eagle Ford Group Of Texas, U.S.A., Maxwell G. London
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
SMU 76938 is a fossil skeleton of a large, nearly complete actinopterygian bony fish housed in Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, USA. It was collected from the Upper Cretaceous Tarrant Formation (middle Cenomanian; ~96 Ma) of the Eagle Ford Group in Tarrant County, Texas, an area where it was near the western margin of the East Texas Embayment during the Late Cretaceous. Although parts of the skull and dorsal fin are damaged, SMU 76938 is relatively complete, especially in the preservation of the caudal fin with its soft tissue outline. The fish has a fusiform body and measures about …
Modification Of Host Behavior And Transmission In The Acanthocephalan Acanthocephalus Dirus: Effects Of Development, Intraspecific Conflict, And Host Sex, Sara R. Teemer
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Parasites are organisms that live on or in another in order to survive. In some cases, parasites require more than one host to complete their life cycle and rely on a predation event for transmission to the next host. Inside the host, the parasite must access host resources to grow and develop from the non-infective to infective stages. At the infective stage, the parasite is able to survive within the definitive host. Development to this stage has been correlated with changes in antipredatory behaviors, body size and color, and reproduction of intermediate hosts in ways that may increase predation by …
Body Forms In Sharks (Chondrichthyes: Elasmobranchii), And Their Functional, Ecological, And Evolutionary Implications, Phillip C. Sternes
Body Forms In Sharks (Chondrichthyes: Elasmobranchii), And Their Functional, Ecological, And Evolutionary Implications, Phillip C. Sternes
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Sharks are among the oldest vertebrate lineages in which their success has been attributed to their diversity in body shape and locomotor design. In this study, I investigated the diversity of body forms in extant sharks using landmark-based geometric morphometric analyses on lateral view illustrations of nearly all the known (ca. 470) extant sharks in a published guidebook. I ran three different analyses: the ‘full body,' ‘precaudal body,’ and ‘caudal fin' analyses. My study suggests that there are two basic body forms in sharks. The two major body forms are characterized as a ‘shallow-bodied’ form (Group A) and ‘deep-bodied’ form …
Wavelet Analysis Of Short Globular Homologous Proteins In Mesophile And Thermophile Prokaryotes, John B. Linehan
Wavelet Analysis Of Short Globular Homologous Proteins In Mesophile And Thermophile Prokaryotes, John B. Linehan
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
This study looked to identify features related to thermal stability and function in the amino acid chains of short globular proteins from mesophile and thermophile species, within the constraint that the protein fold to perform a speci_c function. To do so 540 homologous pairs of proteins were studied. The amino acid chains were con-verted to hydrophobicity signals by assigning a hydropathy score to each residue in the polypeptide. The hydrophobicity signals were passed through a wavelet packet transform and the resulting spectra analyzed. Bootstrapping was used to gener-ate a control data set to determine if the true ordering of amino …
Phylogeography Of The Neotropical Fish Genus Rhoadsia (Teleostei: Characidae) In Ecuador, Roberto Valentino Cucalón Tamayo
Phylogeography Of The Neotropical Fish Genus Rhoadsia (Teleostei: Characidae) In Ecuador, Roberto Valentino Cucalón Tamayo
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Western Ecuador is considered a biodiversity hotspot. Nevertheless, studies of population genetic structure and variation are rare, especially in aquatic species. The genus Rhoadsia is an endemic freshwater fish in this region with two recognized species, Rhoadsia minor and R. altipinna. Little is known about the evolutionary relationships of their populations, and due to morphological similarities, their validity as distinct species has been questioned. The present study uses a phylogeographic approach to examine the evolutionary history of the genus and the validity of the two described species. Furthermore, I investigated the possible geographical origin of the genus based on patterns …
Sex Differences In Behavioral Responses To Repeat Subconcussive Events, Rebecca J. Wilson
Sex Differences In Behavioral Responses To Repeat Subconcussive Events, Rebecca J. Wilson
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Although concussions, especially those in athletes and military, have become a popular focus of neurotrauma research, subconcussions occur with higher frequency and are less well-studied. A subconcussion is loosely defined as an impact to the head that does not result in a diagnosable concussion but can result in neuronal alterations. Repeat subconcussions have been shown to produce behavioral impairments along with neuropathology that is similar to or worse than those seen in a single concussion injury. These studies have primarily included male subjects. Given the potential effects of hormones and NIH’s call for sex-inclusion in biomedical research, assessing female responses …