Life Sciences Commons^™

Temperature Effects On The Development Of The Axial Skeleton And Body Shape In Astyanax Mexicanus (Teleostei: Characidae), Joseph David Forberg

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Humans are causing large-scale changes in environmental conditions across the planet including in temperature. Changes in the environmental conditions can lead to phenotypic changes in ectotherms that affect adaptively important traits like body shape and the axial skeleton. Previous studies have shown that temperature changes during development significantly affects body shape and vertebral number in the Mexican tetra Astyanax mexicanus. How these changes arise early in development is not clear. In this study, I examine how changes in developmental temperature affect body shape in larval and juvenile fish, the order of ossification of elements of the axial skeleton, the size …

Time Domains Of Hypoxia Responses And -Omics Insights, James J. Yu, Amy L. Non, Erica C. Heinrich, Wanjun Gu, Joe Alcock, Esteban A. Moya, Elijah S. Lawrence, Michael S. Tift, Katie A. O'Brien, Jay F. Storz, Anthony V. Signore, Jane I. Khudyakov, William K. Milsom, Sean M. Wilson, Cynthia M. Beall, Francisco C. Villafuerte, Tsering Stobdan, Colleen G. Julian, Lorna G. Moore, Mark M. Fuster, Jennifer A. Stokes, Richard Milner, John B. West, Jiao Zhang, John Y. Shyy, Ainash Childebayeva, José Pablo Vázquez-Medina, Luu V. Pham, Omar A. Mesarwi, James E. Hall, Zachary A. Cheviron, Jeremy Sieker, Arlin B. Blood, Jason X. Yuan, Tatum S. Simonson, Et Al.

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The ability to respond rapidly to changes in oxygen tension is critical for many forms of life. Challenges to oxygen homeostasis, specifically in the contexts of evolutionary biology and biomedicine, provide important insights into mechanisms of hypoxia adaptation and tolerance. Here we synthesize findings across varying time domains of hypoxia in terms of oxygen delivery, ranging from early animal to modern human evolution and examine the potential impacts of environmental and clinical challenges through emerging multi-omics approaches. We discuss how diverse animal species have adapted to hypoxic environments, how humans vary in their responses to hypoxia (i.e., in the context …

‘Bunkering Down’: How One Community Is Tightening Social-Ecological Network Structures In The Face Of Global Change, Michele L. Barnes, Lorien Jasny, Andrew Bauman, Jon Ben, Ramiro Berardo, Örjan Bodin, Josh Eli Cinner, David A. Feary, Angela M. Guerrero, Fraser A. Januchowski-Hartley, John T. Kuange, Jacqueline D. Lau, Peng Wang, Jessica Zamborain-Mason

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

1. Complex networks of relationships among and between people and nature (social-ecological networks) play an important role in sustainability; yet, we have limited empirical understanding of their temporal dynamics.
2. We empirically examine the evolution of a social-ecological network in a common-pool resource system faced with escalating social and environmental change over the past two decades.
3. We first draw on quantitative and qualitative data collected between 2002 and 2018 in a Papua New Guinean reef fishing community to provide contextual evidence regarding the extent of social and environmental change being experienced. We then develop a temporal multilevel exponential random graph model using …

Epistemic Beliefs: Relationship To Future Expectancies And Quality Of Life In Cancer Patients., Paul K J Han, Elizabeth Scharnetzki, Eric Anderson, John Dipalazzo, Tania D Strout, Caitlin Gutheil, F Lee Lucas, Emily A Edelman, Jens Rueter

Faculty Research 2022

CONTEXT: Expectations about the future (future expectancies) are important determinants of psychological well-being among cancer patients, but the strategies patients use to maintain positive and cope with negative expectancies are incompletely understood.

OBJECTIVES: To obtain preliminary evidence on the potential role of one strategy for managing future expectancies: the adoption of "epistemic beliefs" in fundamental limits to medical knowledge.

METHODS: A sample of 1307 primarily advanced-stage cancer patients participating in a genomic tumor testing study in community oncology practices completed measures of epistemic beliefs, positive future expectancies, and mental and physical health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Descriptive and linear regression …

Age-Related Changes In Corticospinal Drive During Locomotor Adaptation, Sumire D. Sato

Doctoral Dissertations

During activities of daily living, locomotor patterns must be continuously adapted according to changes in our body (e.g., bodily injuries, fatigue) and to the changing environment (e.g., walking surface). Plasticity of spinal networks and supraspinal centers, including the cerebellum and cerebral cortex, have been shown to play important roles in human locomotor adaptation. However, the neural control of locomotion and the ability to adapt locomotor patterns are altered in older adults, which may limit activities of daily living and increase fall-related injuries in the elderly population. My dissertation project is focused on understanding the role of corticospinal drive during split-belt …

Importance Of Local Weather And Environmental Gradients On Demography Of A Broadly Distributed Temperate Frog, Hallie Lingo, James C. Munger

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Amphibian populations are sensitive to environmental temperatures and moisture, which vary with local weather conditions and may reach new norms and extremes as contemporary climate change progresses. Using long-term (11–16 years) mark-recapture data from 10 populations of the Columbia spotted frog (Rana luteiventris) from across its U.S. range, we addressed hypotheses about how demographic relationships to weather depend upon a population’s position along climate gradients. We estimated the effect of seasonal weather on annual survival probability and recruitment rates both within populations and across the species’ range from subalpine forests to semi-arid deserts. We calculated population-specific weather variables …

Editorial: Adaptation Of Trees To Climate Change: Mechanisms Behind Physiological And Ecological Resilience And Vulnerability, Andrea Ghirardo, James D. Blande, Nadine K. Ruehr, Raffaella Balestrini, Carsten Külheim

Michigan Tech Publications

No abstract provided.

Navigating Loss And Value Trade-Offs In A Changing Climate, Karen Paiva Henrique, Petra Tschakert, Chantal Bourgault Du Coudray, Pierre Horwitz, Kai Daniel Christian Krueger, Alexander James Wheeler

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Climate change puts at risk what people value in their everyday lives, with evidence of harm and suffering already taking place across all regions of the world. As societies slowly come to grips with the possibility of not being able to save everything that is valued, there is an urgent need to identify what is most important for individuals and groups, to prioritise action and prevent or minimise intolerable losses. Yet, people's priorities vary greatly; individual choices are contingent on what people hold dear in the places they inhabit, which in turn is shaped by their positioning in society and …

An Optimal Lysis Time Maximizes Bacteriophage Fitness In Quasi-Continuous Culture, Sherin Kannoly, Abhyudai Singh, John J. Dennehy

Publications and Research

Optimality models have a checkered history in evolutionary biology. While optimality models have been successful in providing valuable insight into the evolution of a wide variety of biological traits, a common objection is that optimality models are overly simplistic and ignore organismal genetics. We revisit evolutionary optimization in the context of a major bacteriophage life history trait, lysis time. Lysis time refers to the period spanning phage infection of a host cell and its lysis, whereupon phage progenies are released. Lysis time, therefore, directly determines phage fecundity assuming progeny assembly does not exhaust host resources prior to lysis. Noting that …

Climate Adaptive Forest Management In The Northeastern Us: Social And Ecological Motivations, Barriers, And Responses Of Rural And Urban Foresters, Teresa Mcgann

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This project examines how foresters in a diversity of professional contexts perceive and respond to global change in the northeastern United States, with the goal of supporting foresters in broadening and deepening their use of climate adaptive strategies. Based on qualitative analysis of 32 in-depth semi-structured interviews with urban and rural foresters (n = 15 and n = 17, respectively) across New England and New York, a summary is presented of the i) important environmental drivers of adaptation; ii) commonly employed adaptive practices; iii) significant barriers to adaptation; and iv) approaches to working through named barriers. According to the motivations, …

Copepods As A Model System For Exploring The Impacts Of Climate Change On Marine Ectotherms, Lauren Ashlock

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Marine ecosystems provide essential habitat to ecologically and economically impactful species and provide humans with a wealth of ecosystem services. With climate change, marine ecosystems are increasing in mean temperature and temperature variability. Marine ectotherms are vulnerable to this change and are important sentinels of warming, as their internal physiology is dependent on the external thermal environment.

Copepods are marine ectotherms that play a critical role in trophic transfer and nutrient cycling. Importantly, copepods are relatively short-lived, allowing them to track ocean change as it happens. Together, these qualities make copepods a reliable model for understanding the impacts of global …