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Reflexivity: A First Demonstration, Melissa Jane Swisher Aug 2016

Reflexivity: A First Demonstration, Melissa Jane Swisher

Open Access Dissertations

Currently, the emergent relation of reflexivity after training a set of baseline relations has not been demonstrated with any animal—human or nonhuman. True reflexivity can only be demonstrated if no identity (i.e., physically matching stimulus) relations are trained. In six experiments, the emergence of reflexivity and its opposite, anti-reflexivity, were explored. Pigeons received concurrent successive matching training on two or three arbitrary tasks: AB hue-form and BC form-hue (and AC hue-hue) matching. Once they had acquired these tasks, they were tested for BB (form-form) reflexivity or BB’ (form-form) anti-reflexivity matching. Most (10 of 13) pigeons that received three arbitrary tasks …


Piping Plover (Charadrius Melodius) Conservation On The Barrier Islands Of New York: Habitat Quality And Implications In A Changing Climate, Jennifer Ruth Seavey Sep 2009

Piping Plover (Charadrius Melodius) Conservation On The Barrier Islands Of New York: Habitat Quality And Implications In A Changing Climate, Jennifer Ruth Seavey

Open Access Dissertations

Habitat loss is the leading cause of species extinction. Protecting and managing habitat quality is vital to an organism's persistence, and essential to endangered species recovery. We conducted an investigation of habitat quality and potential impacts from climate change to piping plovers (Charadrius melodius) breeding on the barrier island ecosystem of New York, during 2003-2005. Our first step in this analysis was to examined the relationship between two common measures of habitat quality: density and productivity (Chapter 1). We used both central and limiting tendency data analysis to find that density significantly limited productivity across many spatial scales, especially broader …