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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Monitoring The Effects Of Poultry Waste On Fishes And Macroinvertebrates In The Sabine River, Karley R. Parker
Monitoring The Effects Of Poultry Waste On Fishes And Macroinvertebrates In The Sabine River, Karley R. Parker
Biology Theses
Freshwater is a vital resource that provides life and sustainability for almost all organisms on Earth. It is important to maintain its health and protect it from emerging pollutants that pose a threat to the organisms that use it. Pollution continues to threaten the well-being of the environment’s freshwater sources all around the world that could lead to damaging effects in the future. The Sabine River is a major freshwater resource in the east Texas and western Louisiana areas that provides a habitat for thousands of organisms as well as other domestic uses for humans. In 2019, a waste discharge …
Life After Death – Does Carcass Biodiversity Scale With Carcass Body Size?, Troy Warfield
Life After Death – Does Carcass Biodiversity Scale With Carcass Body Size?, Troy Warfield
Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses
Mammals play a large role in the ecosystems where some, especially large-bodied mammals, act as ecosystem engineers. Mammal carcasses, particularly those of large body mass act as a temporary island of dense nutrients that support other organisms, including other mammal species, for an extended period. Research in this field currently focuses on the link between mammal carcass size and nutrient availably or on non-mammalian size and biodiversity, but little is available on the correlation between mammal carcass size and its influence on ecosystem biodiversity. Here we ask, does the available biomass (i.e., body size) of the carcass affect its role …
Of Biodiversity, Boundaries, And Distribution: The Myxomycetes Of The Philippines And Beyond, Sittie Aisha Bustamante Macabago
Of Biodiversity, Boundaries, And Distribution: The Myxomycetes Of The Philippines And Beyond, Sittie Aisha Bustamante Macabago
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation contains a compilation of independently performed studies primarily focusing on the myxomycetes (plasmodial slime molds) from the Philippines and integrating local and worldwide data to demonstrate regional and global trends. The major themes include the following: (I) a review of the diverse group of spore-producing amoeboid protists, including the myxomycetes; (II-IV) diversity assessments in three different groups of islands in the Philippine archipelago; (V) mapping the myxomycetes found in the Philippines for databasing and analyzing the geocoded data; (VI) a study on regional boundaries, including the Philippines, using myxomycete species composition; and, (VII) creating a global species distribution …
Diatom Voucher Flora And Comparison Of Collection Methods For Biodiversity Hotspot Upper Three Runs Creek, Katie M. Johnson
Diatom Voucher Flora And Comparison Of Collection Methods For Biodiversity Hotspot Upper Three Runs Creek, Katie M. Johnson
Biology Theses
Surface freshwater is a scarce resource. Due to the scarcity and necessity of this resource, it is imperative that its quality is routinely monitored. One way of monitoring water quality is through biological assessments, which include examining algal assemblages. Regionally, little remains known of algal taxa in the southeastern United States. In the past, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP) conducted biological assessments along the Savannah River finding Gomphonema parvulum (Kützing) Kützing 1849 to be a dominant taxon rendering assessments inconclusive. Recent studies have provided evidence that species complexes and semi-cryptic taxa have been identified within the Gomphonema …
Mammal Species Inventory Using Various Trapping Methods In Zone 4 Of Billy Barquedier National Park, Belize During Rainy Season, Mersady Redding
Mammal Species Inventory Using Various Trapping Methods In Zone 4 Of Billy Barquedier National Park, Belize During Rainy Season, Mersady Redding
Animal Science Undergraduate Honors Theses
Belize is a small country, but it is extremely ecologically diverse. Based on the few studies conducted in Belize, the abundance of mammals is low but diversity is high. Particular findings note the number and identity of species differed between four sites in the Maya Mountains of Belize, indicating that a data set from a single site is not representative of the Neotropical region. Insufficient data is available to estimate current species richness of many areas in Belize, including Billy Barquedier National Park (BBNP). The objective of this study was to explore trapping and documentation methods of terrestrial mammals in …
Where Birds Chill: An Assessment Of The Habitat Preferences Of Birds Overwintering In Hudson Valley Forests, Elizabeth Claire Axley
Where Birds Chill: An Assessment Of The Habitat Preferences Of Birds Overwintering In Hudson Valley Forests, Elizabeth Claire Axley
Senior Projects Spring 2019
Many avian species overwinter in eastern North America; however, studies on bird populations are rarely undertaken during this critical survival time, and little is known as to their habitat preferences and foraging behavior. In this observational study, we performed a survey of birds overwintering in the Hudson Valley’s temperate, primarily-deciduous forests, assessing avian populations’ habitat preferences through the vegetative structural variables surrounding overwintering birds as they forage. Our results suggest that high canopy cover is critically important to predicting overwintering bird occupancy on a microhabitat scale. Moreover, overwintering birds preferentially occupy forest plots not dominated by sugar maples, in spite …
Understanding The Impacts Of Current And Future Environmental Variation On Central African Amphibian Biodiversity, Courtney A. Miller
Understanding The Impacts Of Current And Future Environmental Variation On Central African Amphibian Biodiversity, Courtney A. Miller
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
Global climate change is projected to impact multiple levels of biodiversity by imposing strong selection pressures on existing populations, triggering shifts in species distributions, and reorganizing entire communities. The Lower Guineo-Congolian region in central Africa, a reservoir for amphibian diversity, is predicted to be severely affected by future climate change through rising temperatures and greater variability in rainfall. Geospatial modelling can be used to assess how environmental variation shapes patterns of biological variation – from the genomic to the community level – and use these associations to predict patterns of biological change across space and time. The overall goal of …
No Farm Is An Island: Pollinators And Pollination In Agricultural Landscapes, Charles C. Nicholson
No Farm Is An Island: Pollinators And Pollination In Agricultural Landscapes, Charles C. Nicholson
Graduate College Dissertations and Theses
Productive, resilient and sustainable agricultural systems are required to meet the immediate needs of a burgeoning human population, while avoiding ecosystem collapse. Agriculture provides food, fiber, fuels and other products for our current population of 7 billion and is still the major livelihood for 40% of people worldwide. By replacing natural habitat and employing chemical inputs, agriculture also negatively impacts biodiversity and impairs the provision of ecosystem services. This poses a challenge for agriculture as these impacted services are often those required for high yielding and high-quality crop production. Evidence is accumulating that agricultural management can safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem …
Reef Fish Biodiversity In The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Megan E. Hepner
Reef Fish Biodiversity In The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Megan E. Hepner
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The biological diversity of reef-fish in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) from 1999 – 2016 was evaluated in terms of abundance, biomass, species richness, evenness, Shannon diversity, Simpson diversity, and functional diversity, using observations collected by multiple agencies and institutions under the Reef Visual Census (RVC) program. To compare the different diversity indices species richness, Shannon diversity, Simpson diversity, and functional diversity were converted into effective number of species. I examined the seven indices by no-take marine zones, in seven benthic habitat strata, and across the three-distinct geographic subregions in the Florida Keys domain (Upper, Middle, and Lower …
Systematics Of The African River Frog Genus Amietia (Anura: Pyxicephalidae) From Eastern Democratic Republic Of The Congo, Thornton Robert Larson
Systematics Of The African River Frog Genus Amietia (Anura: Pyxicephalidae) From Eastern Democratic Republic Of The Congo, Thornton Robert Larson
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The African river frog genus Amietia is found near rivers and other lentic water sources throughout central, eastern and southern Africa. Because the genus includes multiple morphologically conservative species, taxonomic studies of river frogs have been limited. We sampled 49 individuals of Amietia from multiple localities in and near the Albertine Rift (AR) of Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. We utilized single-gene (16S) and concatenated (12S, 16S, cytochrome b and RAG1) gene-tree analyses and coalescent species-tree analyses to construct phylogenetic trees. Two divergence dating approaches were used in BEAST, including secondary calibration points with 12S, 16S and …
Marine Fungi Of U.S. Gulf Of Mexico Barrier Island Beaches: Biodiversity And Sampling Strategy, Allison Kathleen Walker
Marine Fungi Of U.S. Gulf Of Mexico Barrier Island Beaches: Biodiversity And Sampling Strategy, Allison Kathleen Walker
Dissertations
Marine fungi are an important but often overlooked component of marine ecosystems. Primarily saprotrophic, they are vital to coastal nutrient cycling processes and food webs. However, basic marine fungal distribution data are lacking in many parts of the world, as is knowledge of the sampling intensity required to characterize the biodiversity of these communities. The roles of substrate, season and latitude in shaping intertidal ascomycete community structure were examined for the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, and the role of sampling frequency on species richness estimates was also addressed. Best sampling practices were developed and 750 collections of beach detritus, sand …
Devil In A Hula Skirt: Comparative Conservation Efforts Between The United States And Australia Using Two Endemic Species As Case Studies, Sarah Catherine Kuchinsky
Devil In A Hula Skirt: Comparative Conservation Efforts Between The United States And Australia Using Two Endemic Species As Case Studies, Sarah Catherine Kuchinsky
Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection
There is a biodiversity crisis in our midst. An abundance of technology and innovation in the last 200 years has revamped our world but at the cost of pushing many species to extinction. Since the passing of the Endangered Species Act by Congress in 1973, more than 100 species in the United States have disappeared (Wilson 2006). The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) stats that "19,265 species out of the 59,507 so far assessed as threatened with extinction," (IUCN 2011). Extinction is the result of a combination of factors caused by human environmental disturbance. Disturbances in the …
Systematics Of Leptopelis (Anura: Arthroleptidae) From The Itombwe Plateau, Eastern Democratic Republic Of The Congo, Francisco Portillo
Systematics Of Leptopelis (Anura: Arthroleptidae) From The Itombwe Plateau, Eastern Democratic Republic Of The Congo, Francisco Portillo
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Leptopelis, a genus of Central African treefrogs, includes 51 species that live in tropical forests and savannas. Currently, only two species of Leptopelis are known from the poorly explored Itombwe Plateau in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Itombwe is renowned among conservationists for its rich and endemic amphibian fauna, including: Xenopus itombwensis, Chrysobatrachus cupreonitens, Laurentophryne parkeri, Hyperolius leleupi and at least three species of Arthroleptis. Evolutionary relationships of Itombwe Leptopelis were examined by sequencing two mitochondrial genes (16S: 557 bp [base pairs], cyt b: 620 bp) and one nuclear gene (RAG1: 761 bp). Results recovered strong support for …
An Analysis Of The Habitat Distribution Of The Fauna Of A Stream- Bank Association In Western Kansas, Olive Falls
An Analysis Of The Habitat Distribution Of The Fauna Of A Stream- Bank Association In Western Kansas, Olive Falls
Master's Theses
This present paper is chiefly concerned with the distribution of animals. The environmental and faunal conditions of Western Kansas have not been studied, and they are rapidly changing, due to human occupancy of the region. Therefore, a major object of this report is to put on record information in regard to the present vertebrate animal life in Western Kansas. Profound changes in the native conditions have already been recognized; for example, many animals have become extinct, and others are gradually vanishing. It is in the hope of contributing something of the facts of the status of the species in this …