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Response Of Fishes To Restoration Projects In Bayou St. John Located Within The City Of New Orleans, Louisiana, Including Hydrological Characterization And Hydrodynamic Modelling, Patrick W. Smith

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Quantifying the impacts of restoration on coastal waterways is crucial to understanding their effectiveness. Here, I look at the impacts of multiple restoration projects on urban waterways within the city limits of New Orleans, LA, with an emphasis on the response of fishes. First I report the effects of two projects designed to improve exchange down estuary on the hydrologic characteristics of Bayou St. John (BSJ). Within BSJ, flow is dominated by subtidal wind driven processes. Removal of an outdated flood control structure did not appear to alter exchange in BSJ, but removal combined with sector gate openings did. I …

Prey Capture Behavior In The East African Scorpions Parabuthus Leiosoma (Ehrenberg, 1828) And P. Pallidus Pocock, 1895 (Scorpiones: Buthidae), Jan O. Rein

Euscorpius

Prey capture behavior in Parabuthus leiosoma (Ehrenberg, 1828) and P. pallidus Pocock, 1895 was studied in the laboratory. The behavioral components involved in prey capture were identified and an ethogram is presented. The occurrence of the different prey capture components are analyzed and discussed.

Odorant Receptor-Based Discovery Of Natural Repellents Of Human Lice, Julien Pelletier, Pingxi Xu, Kyong-Sup Yoon, John M. Clark, Walter S. Leal

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

The body louse, Pediculus humanus humanus, is an obligate blood-feeding ectoparasite and an important insect vector that mediates the transmission of diseases to humans. The analysis of the body louse genome revealed a drastic reduction of the chemosensory gene repertoires when compared to other insects, suggesting specific olfactory adaptations to host specialization and permanent parasitic lifestyle. Here, we present for the first time functional evidence for the role of odorant receptors (ORs) in this insect, with the objective to gain insight into the chemical ecology of this vector. We identified seven putative full-length ORs, in addition to the odorant receptor …

Effects Of Supplemental Hydration On Physiology And Behavior Of Northern Pacific Rattlesnakes (Crotalus Oreganus Oreganus), Griffin D. Capehart

Master's Theses

Hydration is a critical element for many physiological processes in vertebrates, such as protein production, innate immunity, and behavioral processes such as daily activity and thermoregulation. Few studies have directly assessed the effect of hydration on these animals in nature. While it seems intuitive that drought is stressful to animals, studies examining drought are typically observational and fail to assess how the hydration state of these animals influences their physiology and behavior. We tested for an effect of hydration on several physiological and behavioral parameters in Northern Pacific rattlesnakes (Crotalus oreganus oreganus) by experimentally manipulating hydration levels in …

Ecology, Behavior And Taxonomy Of Anurans From Brazil's Atlantic Forest, Rodrigio Barbosa Ferreira

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Anura is a diverse group with more than 7382 species described, which represents 88% of the species belonging to the Class Amphibia. Anurans are among the first organisms to be affected by environmental stressors, so when they show decline in the wild, it is a warning to other species, including humans. It is alarming that one-third of the world’s anurans are facing extinction. Following the same trend, a substantive portion of the 988 recognized species of the Atlantic Forest have suffered population declines and local extinctions, attributed primarily to habitat changes.

Despite the unique life history characteristics that make amphibians …

Mechanisms For Social Influence, Jeremy David Auerbach

Masters Theses

Throughout the thesis, I study mathematical models that can help explain the dependency of social phenomena in animals and humans on individual traits. The first chapter investigates consensus building in human groups through communication of individual preferences for a course of action. Individuals share and modify these preferences through speaker listener interactions. Personality traits, reputations, and social networks structures effect these modifications and eventually the group will reach a consensus. If there is variation in personality traits, the time to reach consensus is delayed. Reputation models are introduced and explored, finding that those who can best estimate the average initial …

Effects Of Human Recreational Activity On The Tameness Of Common Loons (Gavia Immer) In Northern Wisconsin, Seth Yund

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The Common Loon (Gavia immer) is an aquatic diving bird that lives in freshwater habitats in Canada and the northern U.S.. Human activity on a loon’s resident lake may affect its fitness and behavior, yet few studies identify or quantify these effects. We modified existing techniques that measure escape distances in other species to measure tameness as the distance at which individual loons dove in response to human approach by canoe. Tameness was similar between pair members, suggesting that common lake conditions or the behavior of a mate might influence the behavior. Sex, size within sex, and human activity did …

Social Communication Of Predator-Induced Changes In Drosophila Behavior And Germ Line Physiology, Balint Z. Kacsoh, Julianna Bozler, Mani Ramaswami, Giovanni Bosco

Dartmouth Scholarship

Behavioral adaptation to environmental threats and subsequent social transmission of adaptive behavior has evolutionary implications. In Drosophila, exposure to parasitoid wasps leads to a sharp decline in oviposition. We show that exposure to predator elicits both an acute and learned oviposition depression, mediated through the visual system. However, long-term persistence of oviposition depression after predator removal requires neuronal signaling functions, a functional mushroom body, and neurally driven apoptosis of oocytes through effector caspases. Strikingly, wasp-exposed flies (teachers) can transmit egg-retention behavior and trigger ovarian apoptosis in naive, unexposed flies (students). Acquisition and behavioral execution of this socially learned behavior …

Soil Preferences Of Nicrophorus Beetles And The Effects Of Compaction On Burying Behavior, Kelly A. Willemssens

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The American burying beetle, Nicrophorus americanus Olivier was declared federally endangered in 1989 and many efforts to prevent this species from going extinct are ongoing. The Nicrophorus beetles bury small carcasses for reproductive purposes. They also reside in the soil during times of daily and seasonal inactivity. To better understand why N. americanus is in decline, the importance of soil texture, moisture, vegetation, gravel, the burial depth, and the effect of compaction on their burying behavior was examined.

All tested species preferred moist soils with N. orbicollis having a significant preference for wet (pN. marginatus had a significant preference for …

Bats And Disease: Behavioral And Community Responses Of Southern Bat Populations During The White-Nose Syndrome Epizootic, Riley Fehr Bernard

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates regional differences in the behavior and activity of bats in eastern North America during the white-nose syndrome epizootic, specifically in the understudied region of the Southeastern United States. An introductory section provides a brief review of the history of white-nose syndrome, an emerging infectious disease in bats, and its introduction into North America. Chapter one provides the first documented evidence of bat activity outside of hibernacula throughout winter. The research presented in chapter two attempts to explain the variation in load and prevalence of P. destructans among species, sites and between years. Finally, chapter three examines the …

Physiological And Behavioural Responses To Noxious Stimuli In The Atlantic Cod (Gadus Morhua), Jared R. Eckroth, Øyvind Aas-Hansen, Lynne U. Sneddon, Helena Bichão, Kjell B. Døving

Lynne Sneddon, PhD

In the present study, our aim was to compare physiological and behavioural responses to different noxious stimuli to those of a standardized innocuous stimulus, to possibly identify aversive responses indicative of injury detection in a commercially important marine teleost fish, the Atlantic cod. Individual fish were administered with a noxious stimulus to the lip under short-term general anaesthesia (MS-222). The noxious treatments included injection of 0.1% or 2% acetic acid, 0.005% or 0.1% capsaicin, or piercing the lip with a commercial fishing hook. Counts of opercular beat rate (OBR) at 10, 30, 60, 90 and 120 min and observations of …

The Behavioral Causes Of Reproductive Skew In Cooperatively Polygynandrous Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes Formicivorus), Anna C. Brownson

Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations

Reproductive skew, the degree to which reproduction is shared among same-sex individuals in a social group, is a pattern affected by ecological conditions, sociality, cooperation, and the inter- and intrasexual behavior of individuals in complex animal societies. Transactional and compromise skew models assume that high skew is the product of dominance hierarchies among cobreeders, yet this has rarely been tested. Both model types fail to incorporate the decisions of more than two individuals, generally overlooking the effect of female behavior on male reproductive success in multi-male groups, and are ineffective at predicting skew in larger groups characterized by more than …

Effect Of Variation In Nestling Hunger Levels On The Begging Behavior Of Nestlings And The Provisioning Behavior Of Adult American Kestrels, Katheryn Ann Watson

Online Theses and Dissertations

Little is known about how variation in nestling begging intensity influences the behavior of adult raptors and how responses of adult males and females to such variation might differ. My objective was to manipulate the begging intensity of nestling American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) and examine the responses of adult males and females. I studied 12 pairs of kestrels nesting in nest boxes from 1 March to 1 July 2014 at the Blue Grass Army Depot, Madison County, Kentucky. Nest boxes were modified with a separate compartment for a camcorder to record nestling behavior, and a second camcorder was placed outside …

Behavioral Response To Uvb Differs In Subalpine Populations Of Daphnia Melanica, Amanda Tompkins

All Master's Theses

Daphnia are a genus of freshwater zooplankton that inhabit ponds and lakes. They are commonly used as a model organism because they can reproduce clonally and are considered a foundation species in pond ecosystems. Daphnia melanica that inhabit the subalpine ponds of the Olympic National Park are exposed to high levels of ultraviolet radiation (UVR). UVR causes DNA damage that can be detrimental to the organism if not fixed. One way to avoid these harmful rays is to migrate to protected areas. In my study, I looked at two behaviors in D. melanica: diel vertical migration (DVM), which involves …