Life Sciences Commons^™

The Utility Of Environmental Dna And Species Distribution Models In Assessing The Habitat Requirements Of Twelve Fish Species In Alaskan North Slope Rivers, James B. Eddings

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Subsistence fishing is a vital component of Alaska’s North Slope borough economy and culture that is being threatened by human disturbance. These threats mean the fish must be protected, but the size of the region makes conservation planning difficult. Fortunately, advances in species distribution models (SDMs), environmental DNA (eDNA), and remote sensing technologies provide potential to better understand species’ needs and guide management. The objectives of my study were to: (1) map the current habitat suitability for twelve fish species, occurring in Alaska’s North Slope, (2) determine if SDMs based on eDNA data performed similarly to, or improved, models based …

The Social Behavior Of Brown Bears At Mcneil River, Alaska, Allan L. Egbert

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The social behavior of brown bears (Ursus arctos) was studied during the summers of 1972 and 1973 as bears fished for salmon at McNeil River, Alaska. Study objectives were to determine behavioral characteristics of bears in relation to sex and age, changes in social behavior over a 40-day long fishing season, social and environmental parameters correlated with the occurrence of behavior, and to test the hypothesis that brown bears modify social behavior in a feeding aggregation to exploit a resource limited in time and space.

Over one-half of the agonistic interactions consisted of passive deferrals. Encounters that included …