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Development Of A Ddpcr Multiplex To Measure The Immune Response To Borrelia Burgdorferi., Kailey Marie Mccain

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Zoonotic diseases account for a significant proportion of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), with their dynamics being heavily influenced by the environment. While the effects of the environment on population-level disease dynamics have been extensively studied, there is limited research investigating the impact of the environment on individual-level disease susceptibility and transmission. This study aims to fill this gap by creating a tool to examine the variation in immune response to Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme Disease, in two competent host species, Peromyscus leucopus and Peromyscus maniculatus. Two triplex droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) assays were developed to …

Predicting Groundwater Spring Locations From Topographic And Climatic Data Using Maxent Modeling, Ayten Ece Koc

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The World Resources Institute reveals that 17 countries face extremely high levels of water stress. Moreover, with increasing population and industrialization, the gap between water supply and demand increases day by day around the world. Groundwater is a key freshwater source, and springs are important resources as they enable to access groundwater. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor, protect, and manage groundwater springs. The first step in spring management is to recognize and define freshwater resources and to determine the locations of groundwater springs that serve as natural discharge points. Traditionally, field studies have been employed to determine the locations …

Population Demography, Spatial Ecology, And Habitat Use Of The Florida Box Turtle (Terrapene Bauri) On A Barrier Island, Michael D. Mills

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Turtles are one the most threatened vertebrate groups in the world due to anthropogenic threats such as habitat loss and overexploitation. In addition to occupying a range that has been vulnerable to major habitat loss, the Florida box turtle (Terrapene bauri) is particularly at risk of overexploitation due to its popularity in the pet trade. Sanibel Island is a barrier island in southwest Florida that has experienced major habitat loss and is the site of a recent poaching event. In response to these threats, studies of both the population demography and spatial ecology were conducted on Sanibel’s Florida box turtle …

Evaluating The Effect Of Public Health Governance Structure And Public Opinion On Covid-19 Disease Control Interventions, Daniel Chacreton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background

Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the responses to the pandemic varied greatly from nation to nation. In the US, state-level variance in responses has likely contributed to the disparate COVID-19 infection-related state-level outcomes such as incidence and case fatality rates. The large variances in national and sub-national responses to COVID-19 when combined with the abundance of factors that influence disease transmission rates has created a number of important research opportunities.

Methods

In this vain, this research study aims to describe the relationship that exists between public health governance structure and public sentiment and COVID-19 control measure effectiveness …

Bioactivity Of Suberitenones A And B, Jared G. Waters

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Throughout human history, natural products have formed the foundation of medicine. In ancient times, a myriad of herbs and fungi have been attributed properties of healing and rejuvenation. Today, that foundation still very much exists, as natural product chemists isolate bioactive compounds from plants, fungi, animals, and microorganisms alike. As more of these secondary metabolites are discovered, scientists pursue more and more sources of biodiversity that may yield new and unprecedented compounds. To this end, Antarctica has become of particular note, as its unique environmental conditions and highly isolated nature make for rare and unusual adaptations in its native wildlife. …

A Review Of Marine Turtle Orientation And Artificial Lighting Impacts With Novel Results From Florida’S Gulf Coast, Andrea M. Fisher

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial light (i.e. unnatural light emitting from a human-made source) is one of the most extensively distributed, and least managed, type of anthropogenic pollution. Due to the disproportionally high rates of urbanization in critical coastal ecosystems, species, like marine turtles that use beach habitat for nesting activities, are especially vulnerable. Marine turtles employ the use of multiple visual cues (e.g. wavelength, intensity, background illumination, and dark silhouettes) to conduct sea-finding behavior and different variations in cue usage exist across species and geographic location. During nesting and emergence activities, orientation can be interrupted and manipulated by artificial lighting resulting in lower …

Cetacean Maternal Investment: Importance In Conservation Across Species And Drivers For Interspecific Altruism, Christopher Klein

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cetacean maternal investments can be useful for conservation management as well as examining behaviors such as interspecific altruism in the humpback whale, Megaptera novaeangliae. Cetaceans are among the most threatened group of marine mammals. In the second chapter, maternal investments across ~90 species/subspecies of Cetacea were analyzed to aid in the understanding of recovery/replacement for conservation and management. Using Principal Components Analysis (PCA), a relative maternal-investment index for 41 cetacean species was built. The maternal-investment index was a composite of four maternal-investment variables, the duration of gestation, lactation, calving intervals, and the number of reproduction years per female per species. …

Making Change In The Nickel City: Food Banking And Food Insecurity In Buffalo, Ny During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Sarah E. Bradley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In March 2020, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began to spread across the United States. The pandemic disrupted the food system in an unprecedented fashion, exacerbating existing inequalities and contributing to increased rates of food insecurity and charitable food use. This research project considers the food system of Buffalo, New York and seeks to capture the way in which both food insecure households and the food pantries that serve them adapted to the pandemic. Using data from 75 client surveys, 52 qualitative semi-structured interviews with food pantry staff and clients, and 15 participatory GIS mapping interviews, this mixed-methods project describes …

A Chemical Investigation Of Three Antarctic Tunicates Of The Genus Synoicum, Sofia Kokkaliari

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Marine invertebrates, mainly sponges, tunicates and corals, have in the past few decades attracted the interest of the scientific community in regard to their secondary metabolites and their potential as leads in drug discovery. The genus Synoicum is comprised of multiple organisms found in both deep and shallow waters, tropical and cold environments around the world. The majority of the members of this genus that have been investigated can be found in shallow tropical waters due to the ease of accessing and collecting them. Of the cold environments, Antarctica is a representative of the environments where members of the Synoicum …

Elemental Climate Disaster Texts And Queer Ecological Temporality, Laura Mattson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis approaches climate disaster texts as an opportunity to challenge constructions of the body, space, and time. Developed from embodied experiential knowledge about hurricanes, my work will explore how climate disasters can teach us to reimagine human-nature relationships. In my two analysis chapters, I use critical textual analysis and autoethnography to challenge particular representations of the human-nature relationship as a binary between nature and culture. By intervening in the nature-culture binary, I theorize queer ecological temporality as an opportunity to reveal and challenge constructions of nature and time. Working at the intersections of queer and ecocritical theory, this thesis …

Springs Of The Arabian Peninsula: Historical Trends, Current Status And Human Impact In Saudi Arabia, Oman And Jordan, Kamal M. Aljohani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research was conducted to update previous studies of the springs of the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Oman and Jordan). Approach: 76 springs were surveyed in between March and July 2018: 15 Saudi Arabia, 41 Oman and 20 Jordan to ascertain the current status, water quality and zooplankton benthos and fish communities. Investigation of the changes of biota and chemical parameters downstream from the springs source in Saudi Arabia. Results: Mercury exceeded the WHO and USEPA maximum contaminant level (MCL) in 63 of 76 springs, Aluminum exceeded MCL in 8 of 76 springs, and both were the common dissolved heavy …

Ecological Responses Of Seascape Heterogeneity, Dinorah H. Chacin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A core aim of landscape ecologists as well as conservation and management practices has been to understand how processes that structure communities vary as a function of landscape context. Landscape heterogeneity (i.e. landscape composition, configuration) and fine-scale habitat characteristics can influence ecological interactions across habitat patches at a range of scales. Therefore, the main objective of this work is to apply a landscape ecology perspective to understand how seascape heterogeneity can influence demographic rates, community patterns, and ecological processes. To accomplish this overall goal, I conducted a literature review on oyster reefs from a seascape ecology perspective (Chapter 1) and …

The Peculiar Nature Of Florida’S Sandhill Wetlands, Ponds & Lakes— Their Ecohydrology, Relationship With The Regional Aquifer & Importance Within The Landscape., Renae Starr Nowicki

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the ecohydrology of Florida’s peculiar and poorly studied sandhill wetland and water features, particularly those located in west-central Florida. The primary research goals include: compilation and summarization of the available ecohydrologic information for features across Florida; comparison of water level and water geochemistry data between sandhill wetlands and waters and the regional aquifer to provide evidence of regional hydrologic control; and use of geophysical applications to examine the hydraulic connections between sandhill wetlands and waters and the regional aquifer.

From this research, a natural history of sandhill wetland and water ecohydrology is presented, highlighting: the differences between …

Untapped Potential Of Gorgonian Octocorals For Detecting Environmental Change In Biscayne National Park, Florida, Usa, Selena A. Kupfner Johnson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One consequence of dramatic stony-coral loss has been recognition that gorgonian octocorals (Anthozoa: Octocorallia) have emerged among the dominant reef fauna. However, gorgonians are notoriously difficult to field-identify and consequently have been underrepresented in most monitoring efforts resulting in a lack of long-term data. The rich diversity of habitats, close proximity to the urban center of Miami, and connectivity to other areas of Florida have made Biscayne National Park an active location for reef research since its establishment in 1968. As such, a plethora of data (e.g., museum specimen and species abundance data) has been collected and stored in archives …

Taking An “Ecological Turn” In The Evaluation Of Rhetorical Interventions, Peter Cannon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation seeks to develop a new method for the evaluation and assessment of therapeutic libraries in a health ecology. To do so, I employ a modified version of Lloyd Bitzer’s rhetorical situation as a methodological tool for the investigation of health ecologies by applying an ecological analysis to an alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment center in Tampa, Florida. By modifying Bitzer’s rhetorical situation schema and expanding the concept of health ecologies, I develop several innovations useful for tracing the impact of actants and rhetorical events specific to health and medicine. A major focus of this dissertation is a …

Evolutionary Dynamics Of Influenza Type B In The Presence Of Vaccination: An Ecological Study, Lindsey J. Fiedler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the evolutionary dynamics of influenza type B in human hosts is a public health concern as we strive to minimize the disease burden in seasonal epidemics. Vaccination is considered the best defense against contracting influenza, and everyone over the age of 6 months is advised to get vaccinated before each season. The effect that vaccine-acquired immunity has on the evolution of influenza B remains unclear. In the U.S., vaccine-uptake is irregular across the states, and the differing coverages present an opportunity to study how vaccination influences viral evolution. This thesis analyzes the evolutionary patterns of influenza B in the …

Environmental Legacies Of Pre-Contact And Historic Land Use In Antigua, West Indies, Anthony Richard Tricarico

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hurricanes Irma and Maria have recently demonstrated once again the susceptibility of contemporary populations across the Caribbean to climate-driven events. For islands such as Antigua in the eastern Caribbean, this vulnerability is partly a legacy of prior land use. As such, the actions of pre-Contact and historic period inhabitants are intertwined with contemporary socio-ecological challenges faced by Antiguans today. This research sought to understand the relationship between land use and land degradation from ca. AD 100 to the present in eastern Antigua utilizing two markers of anthropic activity: soil stability and soil quality. Specifically, this research sought to examine how …

Respiratory Infections And Risk For Development Of Narcolepsy: Analysis Of The Truven Health Marketscan Database (2008 To 2010) With Additional Assessment Of Incidence And Prevalence, Darren Scheer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Background and Significance: Narcolepsy is a chronic neurological disorder. These patients experience various psychiatric and physical comorbid diseases and mortality at an increased rate compared to the general population. Additionally, patients with narcolepsy experience approximately a doubling of various annual healthcare related facility visits, transactions, and costs comparatively. Narcolepsy with cataplexy is generally believed to be more prevalent than narcolepsy without cataplexy. However, incidence and prevalence estimates of narcolepsy (with or without cataplexy) vary widely with few large epidemiological studies conducted worldwide and none in the U.S evaluating these proportions in both children and adults utilizing a large health care …

Fish Communities On Natural And Artificial Reefs In The Eastern Gulf Of Mexico, Elizabeth C. Viau

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial reefs have been deployed throughout the world’s oceans to act as habitat and fishing enhancement tools. To expand current research on the role of artificial reefs in the marine community, ordination and multivariate regression methods were used here to analyze survey data of natural and artificial reefs. The reefs, located in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM) and on the West Florida Shelf (WFS), had been previously surveyed from 2004 to 2015 using remote operated vehicle and stationary video techniques. This study tested the hypothesis that similar functional roles are accounted for at both natural and artificial reef sites …

Assessing The Impacts Of Ghana’S Oil And Gas Industry On Ecosystem Services And Smallholder Livelihoods, Michael Acheampong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ghana discovered oil and gas within its shores in commercial quantities in the year, 2007. This discovery was hailed as a potential turn around for the country’s economic destiny. While this optimism may have been well-founded, there has been a relative lack of appreciation of the potential adverse implications of the industry on traditional smallholder livelihoods, and the critical ecosystems that form their basis. In many countries, discovery of natural resources results in negative environmental and social outcomes, due to the loss of local livelihoods and environmental degradation. Deterioration of local livelihoods occurs through several biophysical pathways, both simple and …

Remote Sensing And Spatial Metrics For Quantifying Seagrass Landscape Changes: A Study On The 2011 Indian River Lagoon Florida Seagrass Die-Off Event, René Dieter Baumstark

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Florida’s seagrasses are ecologically important marine environments which have suffered major degradation caused by increasing anthropogenic pressures. A 2011 seagrass die-off event caused by an algal bloom in the Florida Indian River Lagoon (IRL) was particularly severe with a majority of seagrass lost in areas such as the Banana River. An understanding of how this coastal marine environment changed is an important step toward better managing resources for conservation. Modern tools and methods provide new opportunities to study these changes at the landscape scale, a scale that informs on the larger more comprehensive state of a system. Classified satellite imagery …

Sleep And Alzheimer’S Disease: A Critical Examination Of The Risk That Sleep Problems Or Disorders Particularly Obstructive Sleep Apnea Pose Towards Developing Alzheimer’S Disease, Omonigho A. Michael Bubu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a critical examination of the relationship between sleep problems and/or disorders, particularly Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and Alzheimer Disease (AD). First, I conducted an exhaustive systematic review of existing literature, and identified gaps in research that led to specific research aims. For the first aim, I conducted the first ever-published meta-analysis examining sleep, cognitive decline and AD, providing an aggregate effect of sleep on AD. Second, focusing on OSA, I conducted a study examining OSA’s effect on longitudinal changes on AD biomarkers in cognitive normal, MCI and AD subjects, using data from the Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative …

Stable Isotopes In The Eye Lenses Of Doryteuthis Plei: Exploring Natal Origins And Migratory Patterns In The Eastern Gulf Of Mexico, Brenna A. Meath

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Stable isotope analysis is an emerging tool to examine trophic pathways and migratory patterns of marine organisms. Squid are widely distributed in coastal and deep water regions of the Gulf of Mexico. Stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen found within cephalopod tissues can provide information on both trophic level and habitat of their food sources. More recently, ontogenetic changes in stable isotope ratios within squid eye lenses have been documented. Concentric layers of crystallin proteins are added to the lens as the squid ages; the center of the lens contains the oldest layer and the youngest layers are on …

Lung Ct Radiomics: An Overview Of Using Images As Data, Samuel Hunt Hawkins

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States and worldwide. Early detection of lung cancer can help improve patient outcomes, and survival prediction can inform plans of treatment. By extracting quantitative features from computed tomography scans of lung cancer, predictive models can be built that can achieve both early detection and survival prediction. To build these predictive models, first a detected lung nodule is segmented, then image features are extracted, and finally a model can be built utilizing image features to make predictions. These predictions can help radiologists improve cancer care.

Building predictive models based …

Effects Of An Early Life Immune Challenge On Body Growth, Personality, Mating Behaviors, And Brain Development Of Zebra Finches (Taeniopygia Guttata), Ahmet Kerim Uysal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The developmental stress hypothesis predicts that an aversive condition, such as decreased food intake, predation, and social isolation, in the early developmental stage could have long term effects on behaviors and brain development of an animal. In nature, bird nestlings are susceptible to various factors, such as malnutrition, infections, and parasites. Effects of early life stress on adulthood have been extensively studied with some stressors including malnutrition. However, immune challenges as an early life stressor and their long-term programming effects on adult behaviors are yet to be studied in detail. The goal of the current study was to investigate changes …

Abundance And Habitat Preferences Of Introduced Muscovy Ducks (Cairina Moschata), Jacqueline Marie Perry Cahanin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Muscovy ducks are native only to Central and South America, Mexico, and parts of southern Texas and are considered invasive in some areas outside of their native range. Although they have been introduced worldwide, they remain largely unstudied. The primary focus of this study was to relate Muscovy duck abundance to habitat characteristics of wetlands in Tampa, Florida. Muscovy abundance was measured using point count methods at 21 wetland sites that occur within an eight km radius of the University of South Florida’s main campus. Habitat features at these sites were assessed using field methods and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) …

Geographical Information Systems (Gis) Applied To Urban Nutrient Management: Data Scarce Case Studies From Belize And Florida, Charlotte Juliane Haberstroh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nutrient inputs into the environment greatly impact urban ecosystems. Appropriate management strategies are needed to limit eutrophication of surface water bodies and contamination of groundwater. In many existing urban environments, retrofits or complete upgrades are needed for stormwater and/or wastewater infrastructure to manage nutrients. However, sustainable urban nutrient management requires comprehensive baseline data that is often not available. A Framework for Urban Nutrient (FUN) Management for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was developed to specifically address those areas with limited data access. Using spatial analysis in GIS, it links water quality, land use, and socio-demographics, thereby reducing data collection and field-based …

Evaluation Of Search And Rescue Planning Tools On The West Florida Shelf, Benjamin O'Loughlin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Coast Guard conducts over 20,000 search and rescue cases a year with approximately 5% of them occurring within the coastal waters of the West Florida Shelf (WFS). Each search effort is planned using the Coast Guard’s Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System (SAROPS) which uses model inputs to create composite probability distributions based on the results of Monte Carlo projections of thousands of particle trajectories. However, SAROPS is limited by the quality of model inputs and their associated errors. This study utilizes observations from three surface drifter deployments on the WFS to evaluate the effectiveness of available surface current …

Molecular Response Of Spartina Alterniflora To The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Mariano Alvarez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although the “genome as a blueprint” metaphor has been pervasive in biology, recent advances in molecular biology have revealed a complex network of regulatory machinery that dynamically regulated molecular processes in response to environmental conditions. However, these patterns, as well as the evolutionary processes that underlie them, remain understudied in natural conditions. In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill released an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making landfall on salt marsh habitat dominated by the foundation species Spartina alterniflora. Despite the severe impacts to phenotype and fitness, S. alterniflora proved remarkably resilient in …

Development And Validation Of A Remote Sensing Model To Identify Anthropogenic Boreholes That Provide Dry Season, Refuge Habitat For Anopheles Vector Mosquitoes In Sub-Saharan Africa, James Pkemoi Kukat

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A lack of surveillance systems is an impediment to public health intervention for perennial vector-borne disease transmission in northern tropical savanna region of Kenya. The population in this area are mostly poor nomadic pastoralists with little acquired functional immunity to Plasmodium falciparum, due to infrequent challenges with the parasite. A common characteristic in tropical savanna climatic zone is the availability of riverbeds that have anthropogenic boreholes that provide malaria vector mosquitoes, such as Anopheles gambiae s.l and Anopheles funestus, with aquatic refuge habitats for proliferation and endemic transmission to proximity human households during the dry-season. Unfortunately, currently there …