Digital Commons Network^™

Underwater Video As A Tool To Quantify Fish Density In Complex Coastal Habitats, Ronald Baker, Dakota Bilbrey, Aaron Bland, Frank D’Alonzo Iii, Hannah Ehrmann, Sharon Havard, Zoe Porter, Sarah Ramsden, Alexandra Rodriquez

University Faculty and Staff Publications

Habitat loss is a serious issue threatening biodiversity across the planet, including coastal habitats that support important fish populations. Many coastal areas have been extensively modified by the construction of infrastructure such as ports, seawalls, docks, and armored shorelines. In addition, habitat restoration and enhancement projects often include constructed breakwaters or reefs. Such infrastructure may have incidental or intended habitat values for fish, yet their physical complexity makes quantitatively sampling these habitats with traditional gears challenging. We used a fleet of unbaited underwater video cameras to quantify fish communities across a variety of constructed and natural habitats in Perdido and …

Responses Of Arthropods To Fire And How Pollinators And Pollination Services Are Affected By Fire Severity, Blyssalyn V. Bieber

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fires impact ecosystems globally and due to climate change, there are shifts in fire regimes that impact ecological communities which provide essential ecosystem services. Focusing on arthropods, fire can influence this ubiquitous animal group in various way. We performed a comprehensive meta-analysis evaluating how fires impact differing arthropod functional groups. We found that overall, fire negatively effects community level responses for most functional groups with herbivores as the only exception showing some positive effects of fire. We also studied mixed-severity fires that burned >20 years ago and compared floral visitor communities across fire severities. We implemented a pollinator exclusion experiment …

Environmental Gradients Impact Key Leaf Traits In Riparian Trees, Amanda Malone

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Specific leaf area (SLA) reflects a plant’s carbon investment per area and relates to generalized leaf economics spectrum growth strategies (LES). To fill gaps of knowledge about intraspecific SLA variation and why it is often inconsistent with the LES, we studied the response of two riparian tree species along the urban-rural gradient in Northeastern Colorado: an invasive, nitrogen-fixer with broad tolerances and a nitrogen-limited and shade-intolerant native. Despite these differences, the two species responded similarly, apart from the response to the urban-rural gradient, in which lower nitrogen in rural areas was associated with a more conservative strategy in the native …

Stormwater Capture Via Green Infrastructure In The Plaster Creek Watershed, Naomi Dykstra, Noah Millen, Ethan Tulp, Josian Aardema, Deanna Geelhoed, David Warners

Summer Research

Calvin University’s campus is located within the Plaster Creek watershed, an area of land from Caledonia to the Grand River, near downtown Grand Rapids. After many years of neglect and mistreatment, it has become one of the most polluted waterways in West Michigan. Plaster Creek Stewards (PCS) aims to improve the local watershed by focusing on education, research and restoration projects. These projects help through reduction of stormwater runoff containing high amounts of sediment and other pollutants through the use of green infrastructure.

Refugia Gardening: A Good Anthropocene Begins At Home, Robin Kollar, David S. Koetje

Summer Research

Our present age is often called the Anthropocene, an era dominated by human activities that erode biodiversity and ecological functions, altering natural systems and cycles. As a result, we are causing climate and mass extinction crises and undermining the ecosystem services that enable human flourishing. Thus, humans have moral and existential obligations to reverse this trend by realigning our relationships with nature. We are advocating for refugia gardening to build places of renewal in our own yards and in our communities. Refugia are pockets of life where species can survive and adapt during ecological crises. Refugia become “seeds” for repopulating …

The Emma Cole Project: Reevaluating The Flora Of Grand Rapids, William Hofmann, Hayden Janssen, Martin Vanderschoot, David Warners

Summer Research

In 1901, botanist and teacher Emma Cole published an account of all the vascular plants in the Grand Rapids area, which is the most comprehensive documentation of the flora in the area today. The vicinity of Grand Rapids has been developed significantly since then, and with it the surrounding natural spaces have also been greatly altered. Over the past 7 years, Calvin University’s Emma Cole Project has been inventorying the flora of greater Grand Rapids and comparing modern plant life with the flora during Cole’s time 120 years ago. This project strives to both verify species’ presence around Grand Rapids …

Translocation Of Timber Rattlesnakes At Two West Virginia State Forests, Elizabeth Morgan Johnson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

In wildlife management, translocation is defined as the purposeful movement of an individual(s) from one place to another with a wildlife management goal. Translocation has become a common tool for mitigating negative human-wildlife interactions. We conducted a translocation study on timber rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus) in response to numerous human-rattlesnake encounters with the goal of developing a translocation protocol that would allow natural resources personnel to mitigate negative encounters between the public and rattlesnakes and reduce impacts to local timber rattlesnake populations. In this study, we scaled translocation distance to site-specific home range characteristics to assess whether translocation outcomes …

Morphological Variation And Community Science In Orthoptera, Amy Byerly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Patterns of morphological divergence across species’ ranges provide insight into local adaptation and speciation. Here, we compare phenotypic divergence among 4,221 crickets from 337 populations of two related species of field cricket, Gryllus firmus and G. pennsylvanicus and their hybrids. We find that these species differ across their geographic range in key morphological traits, such as body size and ovipositor length, and we directly compare phenotype with genotype for a subset of crickets demonstrating nuclear genetic introgression, phenotypic intermediacy of hybrids, and essentially unidirectional mitochondrial introgression. We discuss how these morphological traits relate to life history differences between the species. …

Pain Sentience Criteria And Their Grading, Eva Jablonka, Simona Ginsburg

Animal Sentience

On the basis of the target article by Crump and colleagues, we suggest a more parsimonious scheme for evaluating the evidence for sentience. Since some of the criteria used by Crump et al. are not independent and some are uninformative we exclude some criteria and amalgamate others. We propose that evidence of flexible learning and prioritization, in conjunction with relevant data on brain organization, is sufficient for assigning pain-sentience to an animal and we suggest a scoring scheme based on four criteria.

Truly Minimal Criteria For Animal Sentience, Mark Solms

Animal Sentience

The criteria for determining animal sentience proposed in the target article are sensible but they lack an explicit functional justification for the focus on pain. This commentary provides an abbreviated account of the most basic functional principles that underpin animal sentience and articulates some minimal criteria for determining its presence.

Crustacean Pain, Michael Tye

Animal Sentience

This commentary discusses the target article’s methodology, the relevance of the claim that crustaceans lack a neocortex to the thesis that they feel pain, and the evaluation of the results of some trade-off experiments done with hermit crabs.

No Need For Certainty In Animal Sentience, Yew Kwang Ng

Animal Sentience

This commentary supports Crump et al.’s (2022) point that where risks to welfare are severe, strong evidence of sentience is sufficient to warrant protecting welfare. Crump et al.’s eight criteria for sentience are also useful. Flexible decision-making (5) and flexible behaviour (6) are consistent with Ng (1995). The concession that the “no-need-for-sentience” proposition is unnecessary also strengthens the importance of the target article’s conclusions.

What Might Decapod Sentience Mean For Policy, Practice, And Public?, Richard Gorman

Animal Sentience

Crump et al. provide eight criteria for evaluating sentience in decapods, with scope for for application to other taxa. Their work has attracted the interest of policymakers. This commentary discusses the limitations of conceptual and legal acknowledgement of sentience in chainging practice and public attitudes. More work is needed. Social science may be able to help.

Generalizing Frameworks For Sentience Beyond Natural Species, Michael Levin

Animal Sentience

Crump et al. (2022) offer a well-argued example of an essential development: a rigorous framework for assessing sentience from the perspective of moral concern over an agent’s welfare. Current and forthcoming developments in bioengineering, synthetic morphology, artificial intelligence, biorobotics, and exobiology necessitate an expansion and generalization of this effort. Verbal reports (the Turing Test) and homology to human brains are utterly inadequate criteria for assessing the status of novel, unconventional agents that offer no familiar touchstone of phylogeny or anatomy. We must develop principled approaches to evaluating the sentience of (and thus, our responsibility to) beings of unfamiliar provenance and …

Sentience In Decapods: An Open Question, Mark Briffa

Animal Sentience

Crump et al.’s framework is a powerful tool designed to assist decisions on the ethical treatment of decapod crustaceans. However, the question of whether decapods are sentient (i.e., whether they feel), remains open, perhaps indefinitely. More optimistically, we might design experiments that distinguish among different levels of awareness, sometimes viewed as components of sentience. We should strike a balance between assuming that all organisms are sentient and making unnecessary anatomical assumptions about sentience. Refining current experiments may provide concrete insights about awareness in Decapoda and other taxa.

Does The Sentience Framework Imply All Animals Are Sentient?, Kristin Andrews

Animal Sentience

The eight criteria proposed in Crump et al.’s framework for evaluating pain sentience in decapod crustaceans are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to markers that could increase confidence in an animal’s sentience more generally. Some of the commentaries have already pointed out that pain is only one kind of sentience (Souza Valente). It has also already been pointed out that there are other criteria for pain that could be usefully added to the framework’s eight (Burrell). This expansive thinking about criteria that can be used to increase confidence in sentience raisess the question: in an expansive …

Distinguishing Epistemic And Moral Grounds For Legal Protection, Carlos Montemayor

Animal Sentience

The criteria proposed by Crump et al. are based on various cognitive roles associated with sentience. A subset of them may be sufficient for certain kinds of welfare, but the presence of all of them should be considered as clearly sufficient for substantial kinds of legal protection based on their relation to capacities that we consider essential for moral standing in human beings.

Sugar Snap Organic Pea Hydroponic Grow Guide, Levi Mitchell

Hydroponic Center

Hydroponic Grow Guide for Sugar Snap Organic Peas in a MGS hydroponic system. Hydroponically grown Sugar Snap Peas are a vine-structured plant which require over five feet of overhead height for the vines to grow their structure before fruiting peas. This grow guide covers the optimal nutrient range, optimal pH range, propagation and growing techniques, as well as special considerations for future projects involved with growing sugar snap peas.

Comparing Plant Diversity In Native Landscaping At Calvin University, Rine Wakeman, Dave Warners

Summer Research

Calvin University is home to several naturally planted sites, including woodland areas, three rain gardens, and several landscaping beds. The plants that populate these areas are native to Calvin’s watershed and West Michigan. Until this year, no database existed to keep track of which species of plants grow on campus and where. Over the summer, native sites on campus were surveyed to compile a database of the unique species found to examine the capacity for non-human, non-plant diversity on campus. How does the diversity of native sites compare to traditionally planted sites of similar size or position on Calvin University's …

Floodplain Monitoring – Plaster Creek Segment At Shadyside Park, Alin Stoica, Julie Wildschut

Summer Research

• High stream velocity and flow rate during precipitation events endanger the urban areas through bank erosion and potential of flooding due to steep entrenchment of streambeds. An urban creek, Plaster Creek was impacted by this phenomenon throughout its watershed.
• Plaster Creek Stewards restored the segment of Plaster Creek located within Dutton Shadyside Park, Mi in 2018 by receding the walls of the tall banks that were entrenching the stream.
• The restored floodplains provide improved distribution of overflow water onto the plain, lowering bank erosion and sediment transportation. Native riparian vegetation planted along the plain improves biodiversity, strengthening the creek banks, …

Influence Of Social Cues On The Initiation Of Migratory Behavior In Red Crossbills (Loxia Curvirostra), John Bobo

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The timing of migration is crucial for the fitness of organisms because mistimed migration can cause exposure to difficult conditions. Photoperiod drives migratory timing in many species, but little work has focused on how social cues might fine-tune migratory timing. The goal of this study is to determine if birds use social cues from conspecifics to fine-tune the initiation of migratory behavior and physiology. Red crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) are gregarious, nomadic migrants that make seasonal movements to find patchily-distributed conifer seeds and are responsive to social cues in the context of food. I test the hypothesis that social …

How Deep Do We Have To Go To Rehabilitate Evolutionary Psychology? Reply To Bjorklund, Ellis, & Geary (2022), David S. Moore, David C. Witherington, Darcia Narvaez, Timothy I. Vandiver, Robert Lickliter

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Disciplines like evolutionary-developmental psychology admirably focus on trying to rehabilitate Narrow Evolutionary Psychology (NEP) from within, by adding a developmental focus to NEP’s tenets of adaptationism and computationalism. We argue, however, that these tenets are fundamentally incompatible with taking psychology and its development seriously, and that the kinds of modifications introduced by evolutionary-developmental psychologists do not go deep enough to qualitatively change the non-developmental outlook of NEP.

Evolving Evolutionary Psychology, Darcia Narvaez, David S. Moore, David C. Witherington, Timothy I. Vandiver, Robert Lickliter

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Which evolutionary theory can best benefit psychological theory, research, and application? The most well-known school of evolutionary psychology has a narrow conceptual perspective (a.k.a., “Narrow Evolutionary Psychology” or NEP). Proponents of NEP have long argued that their brand of evolutionary psychology represents a full-fledged scientific revolution, with Buss (2020) recently likening NEP’s scientific impact to that of a Copernican or Darwinian paradigm shift. However, NEP stands on two traditions that are now the subjects of serious debate and revision: the neo-Darwinian adaptationist framework within evolutionary biology, and the computationalist “mind-as-computer” framework within cognitive science. Although NEP calls itself revolutionary, the …

Proteome Database, Mariana Rius, Jackie L. Collier, Joshua Rest

SoMAS Research Data

No abstract provided.

Ms Environmental Biology Capstone Project, Samantha Ortega

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

This project is presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Science in Environmental Biology at Regis University. Chapter 1 is a literature review that discusses the management implications of designing bird habitat on anthropogenic structures. Chapter 2 is a grant proposal to explore niche dominance by anthropophilic bird species in Denver, CO. Chapter 3 is a journal manuscript discussing how musth impacts captive bull Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) behavior at Denver Zoo. Finally, Chapter 4 is a stakeholder analysis for Northern Bobwhite recovery at Bridgestone-Firestone Centennial Wilderness Area, White County, Tennessee.

Ms Environmental Biology Capstone Project, Catherine Shapiro

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Chapter 1: Artificial light at night disrupts the biology of fishes. Chapter 2: Grant proposal to determine how artificial light at night affects Pumpkinseed fish. Chapter 3: Management of pinyon-juniper woodland impacts the occupancy of Pinyon Jays. Chapter 4: Stakeholder analysis of horseshoe crab fishing and its impacts on the Red Knot and biomedical industry.

Plaster Creek Stewards – Urban Habitat Restoration With Green Team, Jia Luchs, Clare Doss, Rachel Warners, David Warners, Deanna Geelhoed

Summer Research

We worked alongside the high school students of the Green Team with our mentor Rachel Warners on various Plaster Creek Projects. We joined PCS in restoring our watershed through native landscaping, meeting community leaders, learning about environmental injustice, hearing about careers in the environmental field, and learning in the classroom about watershed ecology and reconciliation. A key focus of our work is to develop personal relationships with the students and to be an open and relatable resource of what college life is like and our vocational journeys to get there. During our days together we learned about each other’s diverse …

Mississippi Sandhill Crane Conservation Update 2017–2019, Scott G. Hereford, Angela J. Dedrickson

Proceedings of the North American Crane Workshop

To manage crane habitat on the Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge during 2017-2019, 5,822 ha were treated with prescribed burns, 648 ha of woody vegetation were removed, 97 ha of invasive plants were chemically treated, and 1.2 ha of crops were planted. Mississippi sandhill crane (Grus canadensis pulla) use responded to habitat treatment; 348 of 349 VHF radio locations were in treated areas. There were 316 target predators removed. Eighteen captive-reared juveniles were acclimated and released. We detected an average of 38 nests per year, including a record 40 nests in 2019. Fifteen chicks fledged in 2019, …

Twenty-Year Status Of The Eastern Migratory Whooping Crane Reintroduction, Hillary L. Thompson, Nicole M. Gordon, Darby P. Bolt, Jadine R. Lee, Eva K. Szyszkoski

Proceedings of the North American Crane Workshop

Since the 10-year status update in 2011, the first parent-reared whooping cranes (Grus americana) were released in the Eastern Migratory Population, the ultralight program (UL) ended, and cranes were released at new sites in eastern Wisconsin. During 2011-2020, 117 captive-reared whooping cranes were released; 75 costume-reared (35 in UL and 40 in the Direct Autumn Release program) and 42 parent-reared. There were no significant differences in 1- or 3-year survival rates based on rearing technique or release site. The population size remained at about 100 cranes during 2010-2018 but then decreased during 2018-2020 due to a reduced number …

Drivers Of Annual Fledging In The Mississippi Sandhill Crane Population 1991–2018, Henry W. Woolley, Scott G. Hereford, Jerome J. Howard

Proceedings of the North American Crane Workshop

We studied trends in nesting, number of chicks fledged annually, and their environmental and biotic drivers in the wild population of Mississippi sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis pulla) on Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge during 1991-2018. Population size, number of nests, and number of chicks fledged annually increased slowly but significantly over the course of the study. Increases in population size were related to both number of wild-reared chicks fledged annually and number of captive-reared chicks released each year, but wild-reared chicks had significantly higher survivorship than captive-reared chicks. Hurricanes transiently raised mortality rates but only Hurricane Katrina …