Life Sciences Commons^™

Migration-Associated Variation In Blood Parasitism, Body Condition, And Stress In Gambel’S White-Crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia Leucophrys Gambelii), Julianna Deibel

Scripps Senior Theses

Migration is a widespread behavior in animals which both causes and is motivated by fluctuations in nutrient availability. Migration is ecologically important, as it connects areas of differing primary productivities and carries pathogens over distance. The relationship between migration and disease is complex, sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance, and influenced by ecological cycles as well as host, vector and parasite life cycles. Four central migration-infection mechanisms have been proposed: migratory susceptibility, migratory exposure, migratory escape, and migratory culling. These mechanisms may yield increased or decreased infection post-migration, based on migration’s physiological tax and the concentration of pathogens along migratory pathways.

To …

Stress And The City: The Impacts Of City Living And Urbanization On Mental Health, Natalie Akins

Scripps Senior Theses

Urbanization is causing a demographic and cultural shift to the landscape of cities across the globe. Although urban living can be advantageous for both individual and societal growth, it can negatively affect mental health and wellbeing. Individuals living in urban environments have an increased risk for mental disorders like depression and schizophrenia. Certain challenges common in urban environments and associated with increased stress, may be causing the increase with mental illness. Chronic stress and the subsequent hyperactivation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and sustained synthesis of glucocorticoids is detrimental to metabolic, endocrine, and immunologic processes. The overexposure to glucocorticoids can lead …

Neuroscience Of Stress & Addiction: A Digitally Animated Video On How These Brain Systems Interact And Influence Each Other From Early Life Stress To Withdrawal, Claire Bacon-Brenes

Scripps Senior Theses

Alcohol addiction and stress are both highly prevalent health conditions impacting our society. With stress on the rise in college students and alcohol addiction impacting 19.7 million Americans as of 2017, communication around the science of these issues is ever important because of stigma around them. This digitally animated video effectively explains alcohol addiction and stress on a neurobiological level with college science students as the audience, including two important examples of how stress and alcohol addiction interact. Stress experienced early in life is a known risk factor in developing addiction due to dysregulation of the reward pathway and altered …