Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Correlation Between Sleep And Lifespan In Drosophila Melanogaster, Joshua Randall Lisse

Masters Theses

”Adequate sleep is associated with an individual’s health. Too little sleep is associated with many health problems, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, and a general increase in all-cause mortality. Yet the molecular changes that link poor sleep and changes in health are still not well understood. Individuals have a unique daily need for sleep, and deviations from the animal’s regular sleeping patterns can be indicative of, or result in, underlying changes in its health. Therefore, we hypothesize that changes in the sleep architecture in Drosophila melanogaster reflect changes in the fly’s health.

We determined sleep architecture in wild-type male flies over …

Niche-Based Modeling Of Japanese Stiltgrass (Microstegium Vimineum) Using Presence-Only Information, Nathan Bush

Masters Theses

The Connecticut River watershed is experiencing a rapid invasion of aggressive non-native plant species, which threaten watershed function and structure. Volunteer-based monitoring programs such as the University of Massachusetts’ OutSmart Invasives Species Project, Early Detection Distribution Mapping System (EDDMapS) and the Invasive Plant Atlas of New England (IPANE) have gathered valuable invasive plant data. These programs provide a unique opportunity for researchers to model invasive plant species utilizing citizen-sourced data. This study took advantage of these large data sources to model invasive plant distribution and to determine environmental and biophysical predictors that are most influential in dispersion, and to identify …