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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Understanding The Effects Of Embryonic Hyperglycemia On Retinal Development And Maintenance, Kayla Titialii-Torres Jan 2022

Understanding The Effects Of Embryonic Hyperglycemia On Retinal Development And Maintenance, Kayla Titialii-Torres

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Hundreds of millions of people are affected by diabetes worldwide. Whether they are diagnosed with prediabetes or Type I or II diabetes, there are a variety of mechanisms in the pathogenesis of diabetes. Diabetes is a disease which consists of recurring states of hyperglycemia that can be difficult to manage due to either lack of insulin production or improper utilization of insulin. While these mechanisms of action differ, complications induced by diabetes occur in both poorly regulated Type I and II. Common complications of diabetes include nerve damage, kidney damage, and eye damage. Eye damage specifically is called diabetic retinopathy …


Play Behavior And The Development Of Boldness And Caution In Juvenile Belding’S Ground Squirrels (Urocitellus Beldingi), Madelene Shehan May 2019

Play Behavior And The Development Of Boldness And Caution In Juvenile Belding’S Ground Squirrels (Urocitellus Beldingi), Madelene Shehan

Master's Theses

The ubiquity of play among juvenile mammals suggests it provides adaptive benefits, potentially through influences on the development of temperament in young animals. Juvenile Belding’s ground squirrels (Urocitellus beldingi) must balance competing demands for boldness and caution imposed by the fundamental trade-off between their short active season and their vulnerability to predation. In this study, I evaluated whether play helps to facilitate the development of an appropriate balance between boldness and caution in juvenile U. beldingi.I observed the play behavior of juvenile U. beldingiand conducted flight-initiation distance tests to measure boldness-caution at the beginning and toward …


The Effects Of Amphetamine Exposure On Neurodevelopment And Behavior In Early Life Stages Of Danio Rerio, Jennifer D. Bullard Jul 2016

The Effects Of Amphetamine Exposure On Neurodevelopment And Behavior In Early Life Stages Of Danio Rerio, Jennifer D. Bullard

Master of Science in Integrative Biology Theses

Amphetamines are frequently prescribed to young children for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Due to the recent rise in ADHD diagnoses and the resulting increase in amphetamine intake in children, we investigated how amphetamine exposure impacts the development of stereotyped behaviors and the neural circuit that governs these behaviors. The zebrafish (Danio rerio) was used as our model organism because of the extensively studied developmental milestones these fish provide. Using escape responses as a behavior model, we exposed embryos to three doses of amphetamine (10 μg/ml, 20 μg/ml, and 30 μg/ml) environmentally during the first 48 hours of …


Evolvability Of The Skull: A Study Of Genetic Basis And Integration In The Teleost Craniofacial Skeleton, Yinan Hu Mar 2016

Evolvability Of The Skull: A Study Of Genetic Basis And Integration In The Teleost Craniofacial Skeleton, Yinan Hu

Doctoral Dissertations

As the field of evolutionary biology pivots away from a gene-centric view of how adaptive evolution proceeds, renewed emphasis is placed on the origin of phenotypic variation. Understanding the developmental processes that underlie the production of novel traits, and how they might influence evolvability, is considered a primary goal in the on-going “extended evolutionary synthesis”. The following dissertation explores these questions in the context of adaptive radiations in fish, with a focus on morphological variation in the craniofacial skeleton. Specifically, the first chapter investigates the genetic and developmental basis of shape (co-)variation in the feeding apparatus of African cichlid fishes, …