Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

The Evolution Of Fear Ecology: A Fruit Fly (Drosophila Melanogaster) Perspective, Itachi Mills

Theses

Several mechanisms underlie how evolutionary lineages respond to predation pressures or predation risk. Further mechanisms link evolutionary predation responses to how animals forage, or find mates. However, gaps remain in our understanding about how predation and foraging interact in an evolutionary context.

In my first chapter, I elaborate on how predation and foraging relate in to one another in ecological, evolutionary and behavioral contexts. I start out with an overview of fear ecology. Then, I outline how trade-offs influence the evolution of morphological, chemical and behavioral responses to predation. I further elaborate on how these trade-offs influence reproduction. Finally, I …

Nutritional Plasticity In Gray Treefrogs: Interactions Between Competition And Predation Threat, Troy C. Neptune, Sarah S. Bouchard

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

Anurans utilize digestive tradeoffs to best survive in their environment, often in response to competition and predation pressure. In some larval anurans, intraspecific competition induces longer guts, providing a digestive advantage under limiting resources. However, predation threat can induce deeper tails and associated shorter guts in larvae. The purpose of this study was to describe nutritionally plastic responses of larval eastern gray treefrogs, Hyla versicolor, reared with simultaneous environmental stressors: predation and competition. Specifically, we asked if larval guts lengthen to increase digestive efficiency or will tail morphology change to better evade predators? H. versicolor larvae were reared in …

The Role Of Habitat Management In Shaping Predation, Animal Color, And Gene Flow In A Metapopulation Of Florida Scrub Lizards (Sceloporus Woodi), Richard William Orton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogenic disturbance is known to affect biological diversity at the community, species, and genetic levels. Habitat fragmentation, in particular, has been shown to impact predator abundance and distribution, impede dispersal, and augment genetic drift. In small populations, which often result from habitat fragmentation, the effects of human disturbance may be disproportionately expressed. Small populations are more susceptible to selection pressures and random drift because genetic and phenotypic frequencies can become rapidly fixed, in comparison to larger populations. In turn, fixation of maladaptive alleles or morphs can accelerate extinction. For example, cryptic color polymorphism can be maintained by apostatic selection, where …