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Botswana’S Elephant-Back Safari Industry – Stress-Response In Working African Elephants And Analysis Of Their Post-Release Movements, Tanya Lama
Masters Theses
Understanding how African elephants (Loxodonta africana) respond to human interactions in ecotourism operations is critical to safeguarding animal and human welfare and sustaining wildlife ecotourism activities. We investigated the stress response of elephants to a variety of tourist activities over a 15-month period at Abu Camp in northern Botswana. We compared fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (FGM) concentrations across three elephant groups, including: eight elephants in an elephant-tourism operation (Abu herd), three elephants previously reintroduced back into the wild from the Abu herd, and wild elephants. There were no differences in FGM concentrations between the three groups of elephants. The highest observed …
Epigenetic Response To Challenging Environmental Conditions, Marta Robertson
Epigenetic Response To Challenging Environmental Conditions, Marta Robertson
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The discovery of epigenetic mechanisms has ignited speculation into their role in ecological and evolutionary processes. In particular, the contribution of epigenetic variation to adaptation or phenotypic plasticity that is distinct from genetic variation would be an important addition to existing evolutionary mechanisms. Although the research of epigenetic mechanisms from an ecological and evolutionary (or eco-evolutionary) perspective has been growing, it is still unclear how epigenetic variation might function in natural populations and settings and to what extent it might serve to mediate population response to changing environmental conditions over time. Over the course of my dissertation, I explored the …
Glucocorticoids And Parental Effort In Tree Swallows (Tachycineta Bicolor), Mackenzie Prichard
Glucocorticoids And Parental Effort In Tree Swallows (Tachycineta Bicolor), Mackenzie Prichard
Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts
All vertebrates respond to stressful situations through the release of hormones called glucocorticoids (CORT). These hormones alter processes within the body to prioritize long term survival over immediate reproduction. It is hypothesized that this is helps individuals survive until conditions become more favorable for successful reproduction. Historically, stress was hypothesized to primarily to pull organisms out of reproductive life history stages when unfavorable conditions made offspring survival slim (otherwise known as the “CORT-tradeoff hypothesis”). However, recent evidence suggests that birds actively feeding nestlings show elevated CORT levels, possibly due to the increased metabolic demands of parenthood. This relationship has been …