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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Songbird Use Of Problem-Solving Feeders In Urban And Rural Areas, Kayce Miller
Songbird Use Of Problem-Solving Feeders In Urban And Rural Areas, Kayce Miller
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Behavioral flexibility is important for animals to adapt to novel situations in their environment. It has been suggested that birds living in complex environments (e.g., urban areas) should be more flexible than conspecifics in less complex environments. Birds are a particularly well studied group, where novel foraging problems are used to assess flexibility and problem-solving performance of urban and rural animals of the same species; however, this is most frequently done in a lab setting with wild-caught birds originating from different habitats. Using a field-based method to test problem-solving performance should give additional insight into other factors influencing birds’ flexibility. …
Comparative Brain Anatomy Of Lamniform Sharks (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes) And Its Implications To Function, Behavioral Ecology, And Evolution, Francesco Guzzo
Comparative Brain Anatomy Of Lamniform Sharks (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes) And Its Implications To Function, Behavioral Ecology, And Evolution, Francesco Guzzo
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Understanding the diversity of brain morphology is important to understand the evolution of cognitive ability and how ecology and phylogeny have influenced the variation in brain complexity. I examined the morphological variation of the brain in the shark order Lamniformes based on museum specimens and literature. Where I illustrate a wide range of morphological diversity in lamniform brains, my study shows that there is a strong positive correlation between brain size and body size that sharks with a larger brain tend to have a more foliated cerebellum, but that the body weight over brain weight did not correlate with cerebellar …
Modification Of Host Behavior And Transmission In The Acanthocephalan Acanthocephalus Dirus: Effects Of Development, Intraspecific Conflict, And Host Sex, Sara R. Teemer
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Parasites are organisms that live on or in another in order to survive. In some cases, parasites require more than one host to complete their life cycle and rely on a predation event for transmission to the next host. Inside the host, the parasite must access host resources to grow and develop from the non-infective to infective stages. At the infective stage, the parasite is able to survive within the definitive host. Development to this stage has been correlated with changes in antipredatory behaviors, body size and color, and reproduction of intermediate hosts in ways that may increase predation by …
Sex Differences In Behavioral Responses To Repeat Subconcussive Events, Rebecca J. Wilson
Sex Differences In Behavioral Responses To Repeat Subconcussive Events, Rebecca J. Wilson
College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations
Although concussions, especially those in athletes and military, have become a popular focus of neurotrauma research, subconcussions occur with higher frequency and are less well-studied. A subconcussion is loosely defined as an impact to the head that does not result in a diagnosable concussion but can result in neuronal alterations. Repeat subconcussions have been shown to produce behavioral impairments along with neuropathology that is similar to or worse than those seen in a single concussion injury. These studies have primarily included male subjects. Given the potential effects of hormones and NIH’s call for sex-inclusion in biomedical research, assessing female responses …