Life Sciences Commons^™

Landscape Design, Cost Estimate, And Management Plan, Garrett Talbot Williams

Horticulture and Crop Science

The purpose of this project is to evolve a bleak landscape into something that the home owner can appreciate and love. This project will demonstrate the knowledge of this process to provide as a guide for others. This project gives an overview of all aspects of a landscape project including: drawings of an irrigation layout, planting plan, drainage plan, and a construction plan. This project takes place in Riverbank, California, which is located in the Central Valley. The property’s main centerpiece is a pool and adjacent waterfall. However, the landscape currently surrounding the pool is very bare and lacks aesthetic …

Social Organization And Decision Making In North American Bison: Implications For Management, Ryan A. Shaw

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Social organization varies widely among herbivores, and the level of social organization in bison is widely debated. I hypothesized that when mother-daughter relationships are allowed to develop, bison form long-term associations. In my study, 25 treatment mothers were selected from a free-ranging herd and kept together with their calves, while 25 control females had their calves forcefully removed. Treatment mothers and offspring had by far the greatest number of associations with a greater percentage of individuals with a half weight index (HWI) > 0.50. The strongest associations (HWI > 0.31) were among treatment mothers and their offspring. Moreover, these associations persisted over …

An Investigation Of Current Practice In Management Rotations In Dietetic Internships, Emily K. Vaterlaus

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Leadership and management skills are critical to moving the dietetics profession forward; acquisition of those skills begins in the Dietetic Internship (DI). This study examined DI program components related to higher mean scores on the Foodservice and Management domain of the Registration Examination for Dietitians and compared Program Director and Preceptor perceptions of management rotation structure.

Methods: All 242 DI Program Directors (excluding sponsoring institution) received a 47-item electronic questionnaire. Directors provided contact information for up to three DI management rotation primary preceptors. Preceptors received a 35-item electronic questionnaire regarding their perception of interns' management skill development. …

Species And Habitat Interactions Of The Gopher Tortoise: A Keystone Species?, Christopher Catano

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Species-species and species-habitat interactions have been demonstrated to be important in influencing diversity across a variety of ecosystems. Despite generalities in the importance of these interactions, appropriate mechanisms to explain them are absent in many systems. In sandhill systems of the southeast U.S., gopher tortoises have been hypothesized to be a crucial species in the maintenance of diversity and function. However, the mechanisms and magnitude in which they influence their communities and habitats have rarely been empirically quantified. I examined how habitat structure influences tortoise abandonment of burrows and how tortoise densities influence nonvolant vertebrate community diversity. Tortoise burrow abandonment …