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Weekly Survivorship Curves Of Soybean Aphid Biotypes 1 And 4 On Insecticidal Seed-Treated Soybean, Carlos J. Esquivel, Christopher M. Ranger, P. Larry Phelan, Erick J. Martinez, William H. Hendrix, Andrew P. Michel

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Thiamethoxam, an insecticide used in soybean seed treatments, effectively suppresses soybean aphids (Aphis glycines) Matsumura (Hemiptera: Aphididae) for a short time after planting. However, exactly when and how quickly soybean aphid populations could increase is unknown. Likewise, we lack data on virulent soybean aphid biotypes (that can overcome soybean resistance) when fed on seed-treated soybean. Determining the survival of soybean aphids over time on insecticidal seed-treated soybean is critical for improving soybean aphid management and may provide insights to manage aphid virulence to aphid resistant-soybean. In greenhouse and field experiments, aphid-susceptible soybean plants (with and without an insecticidal seed treatment) …

Comparative Susceptibility Of Western Corn Rootworm (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) Neonates To Selected Insecticides And Bt Proteins In The Presence And Absence Of Feeding Stimulants, Adriano E. Pereira, Thomas A. Coudron, Kent Shelby, B. Wade French, Elisa J. Bernklau, Louis B. Bjostad, Bruce E. Hibbard

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

The susceptibility of western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte, larvae to nine insecticides from five different classes and to Bt proteins eCry3.1Ab and mCry3A in the presence or absence of feeding stimulants, was estimated in filter paper and diet toxicity assays, respectively. The use of a synthetic feeding stimulant blend of the sugars glucose, sucrose, and fructose plus linoleic acid at a ratio of 30:4:4:0.3 mg/ml of distilled water was evaluated to determine whether they increase the efficacy of insecticides and Bt proteins. The efficacy of thiamethoxam diluted in solutions with feeding stimulants was significantly increased when compared to …

Transition Pathways To Sustainable Agricultural Water Management: A Review Of Integrated Modeling Approaches, Erin M.K. Haacker, Vaishali Sharda, Amanda M. Cano, R. Aaron Hrozencik, Agustin Nunez, Zachary Zambreski, Soheil Nozari, Garvey Engulu B, Smith, Lacey Moore, Sumit Sharma, Prasanna Gowda, Chittaranjan Ray, Meagan Schipanski, Reagan Waskom

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

Agricultural water management (AWM) is an interdisciplinary concern, cutting across traditional domains such as agronomy, climatology, geology, economics, and sociology. Each of these disciplines has developed numerous process-based and empirical models for AWM. However, models that simulate all major hydrologic, water quality, and crop growth processes in agricultural systems are still lacking. As computers become more powerful, more researchers are choosing to integrate existing models to account for these major processes rather than building new cross-disciplinary models. Model integration carries the hope that, as in a real system, the sum of the model will be greater than the parts. However, …

Simulating The Impacts Of Irrigation Levels On Soybean Production In Texas High Plains To Manage Diminishing Groundwater Levels, Vaishali Sharda, Prasanna H. Gowda, Gary Marek, Isaya Kisekka, Chittaranjan Ray, Pradip Adhikari

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

There is an increasing need to strategize and plan irrigation systems under varied climatic conditions to support efficient irrigation practices while maintaining and improving the sustainability of groundwater systems. This study was undertaken to simulate the growth and production of soybean [Glycine max (L.)] under different irrigation scenarios. The objectives of this study were to calibrate and validate the CROPGRO-Soybean model under Texas High Plains’ (THP) climatic conditions and to apply the calibrated model to simulate the impacts of different irrigation levels and triggers on soybean production. The methodology involved combining short-term experimental data with long-term historical weather data (1951–2012), …

Gmaim: An Analytical Pipeline For Microrna Splicing Profiling Using Generative Model, Kan Liu

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of short (~22 nt) single strand RNA molecules predominantly found in eukaryotes. Being involved in many major biological processes, miRNAs can regulate gene expression by targeting mRNAs to facilitate their degradation or translational inhibition. The imprecise splicing of miRNA splicing which introduces severe variability in terms of sequences of miRNA products and their corresponding downstream gene expression regulation. For example, to study biogenesis of miRNAs, usually, biologists can deplete a gene in the miRNA biogenesis pathway and study the change of miRNA sequences, which can cause impression of miRNAs. Although high-throughput sequencing technologies such as …

Variation Of Protein Molecular Weight Distribution Parameters And Their Correlations With Gluten And Mixing Characteristics For Winter Waxy Wheat, Jae‐Bom Ohm, Linda Dykes, Robert A. Graybosch

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Background and objectives: Little data have been reported on protein molecular weight distribution (MWD) for waxy (amylose‐free) wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) despite their importance in quality. This research aimed to investigate variations of protein MWD parameters and their associations with gluten strength in winter waxy wheat.

Findings: Winter waxy wheat genotypes varied significantly (p < 0.001) for most protein MWD parameters including SDS‐extractable polymeric protein (EPP) and unextractable polymeric protein (UPP) fractions, which are major components of gluten proteins. Allelic variation of HMW glutenin subunits had significant influence on variations of EPP and UPP in waxy genotypes. Negative correlations for EPP and positive correlations for UPP were observed with mixograph peak time and gluten index for wheat genotypes. In particular, highly significant (p < 0.001) correlations were observed between mixograph peak time and the proportion of EPP in total protein for waxy genotypes.

Conclusions: Winter waxy wheat genotypes showed significant variations for EPP and UPP parameters, which were associated with variation of gluten strength.

Significance and novelty: This research identified variation of protein MWD parameters and their associations with gluten strength. The information should be valuable in segregating winter …

Recoupling Fire And Grazing Reduces Wildland Fuel Loads On Rangelands, Heath D. Starns, Samuel D. Fuhlendore, R. Dwayne Elmore, Dirac L. Twidwell Jr, Eric T. Thacker, Torre J. Hovick, Barney Luttbeg

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Fire suppression and exclusion, the historically dominant paradigm of fire management, has resulted in major modifications of fire-dependent ecosystems worldwide. These changes are partially credited with a recent increase in wildfire number and extent, as well as more extreme fire behavior. Fire and herbivory historically interacted, and research has shown that the interaction creates a unique mosaic of vegetation heterogeneity that each disturbance alone does not create. Because fire and grazing have largely been decoupled in modern times, the degree to which the interaction affects fuels and fire regimes has not yet been quantified. We evaluated effects of fire-only and …

Preface: Workshop On Pesticide Exposure Assessment Paradigm For Non-Apis Bees, Richard Bireley, Shannon Borges, Karina Cham, David Epstein, Kristina Garber, Connie Hart, Wayne Hou, Alessio Ippolito, Jens Pistorius, Veronique Poulsen, Keith Sappington, Thomas Steeger

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Since the mid-2000s, increased annual losses of honey bee (Apis mellifera L., Hymenoptera: Apidae) colonies and declines in some species of non-Apis bees have been reported (Biesmeijer et al. 2006, NRC 2007). These losses, particularly with respect to honey bees, have been associated with multiple factors including pesticides, pathogens (viruses, fungi, bacteria), pests (primarily the parasitic mite Varroa destructor Anderson and Trueman [Arachnida: Parasitiformes: Varroidae]), poor nutrition, and bee management practices acting in combination (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2008, 2009; Ratnieks et al. 2010). Because of the role that bees play in providing pollination services to natural and agricultural-based ecosystems, …

Calcareous Nannofossil Biostratigraphy And Paleoecology Of The Fort Hays Limestone Of Western Kansas, Western Interior Basin (Wib), Bryan Hermosillo

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Investigations of Upper Cretaceous hemi-pelagic sediments from the Western Interior Basin suggest that high surface water fertility caused increased production of biogenic carbonate, resulting in the deposition of limestone. We examined calcareous nannofossils from the Turonian/Coniacian Fort Hays Member of the Niobrara Formation to evaluate the correlation between nannofossil surface water fertility proxies and associated lithology. Our paleoecology results indicate that oligotrophic surface water conditions were present during limestone deposition. This stands at odds with existing depositional models for the Western Interior Seaway (WIS). Paleoecological data within the interbedded marls was artificially skewed due to the prevalence of etching caused …

The Transcriptomes Of The Cattle Parasitic Nematode Ostertagia Ostartagi, Sahar Abubucker, Dante S. Zarlenga, John Martin, Yong Yin, Zhengyuan Wang, James P. Mccarter, Louis Gasbarree, Richard K. Wilson, Makedonka Mitreva

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Ostertagia ostertagi is a gastrointestinal parasitic nematode that affects cattle and leads to a loss of production. In this study, we present the first large-scale genomic survey of O. ostertagi by the analysis of expressed transcripts from three stages of the parasite: third- stage larvae, fourth-stage larvae and adult worms. Using an in silico approach, 2284 genes were identified from over 7000 expressed sequence tags and abundant transcripts were analyzed and characterized by their functional profile. Of the 2284 genes, 66% had similarity to other known or predicted genes while the rest were novel and potentially represent genes specific to …

Timber Talk, Vol. 56, No. 4, December 2018

Timber Talk: Nebraska Forest Industry Newsletter

In This Issue:

Lumber Market Reports

Hardwood Lumber Prices

NOTE FROM EDITOR: Transitioning to Electronic Delivery Only

NDA Expands EAB Quarantine

Forest Products Grants Available

Wildfires and Communities in Nebraska

Forest Industry Spotlight: “Good Neighbor Authority” in Nebraska

Trading Post

Timber Sales

Implications Of Spatially Variable Costs And Habitat Conversion Risk In Landscape-Scale Conservation Planning, Max Post Van Der Burg, Neil Chartier, Ryan Drum

United States Geological Survey, Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center: Publications

‘‘Strategic habitat conservation’’ refers to a process used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to develop cost-efficient strategies for conserving wildlife populations and their habitats. Strategic habitat conservation focuses on resolving uncertainties surrounding habitat conservation to meet specific wildlife population objectives (i.e., targets) and developing tools to guide where conservation actions should be focused on the landscape. Although there are examples of using optimization models to highlight where conservation should be delivered, such methods often do not explicitly account for spatial variation in the costs of conservation actions. Furthermore, many planning approaches assume that habitat protection is a preferred …

Designing A Protected Area To Safeguard Imperiled Species From Urbanization, Stephanie S. Romanach, Brad Stith, Fred A. Johnson

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Reserve design is a process that can address ecological, social, and political factors to identify parcels of land needed to sustain wildlife populations and other natural resources. Acquisition of parcels for a large terrestrial reserve is difficult because it typically occurs over a long timeframe and thus invokes consideration of future conditions such as climate and urbanization changes. In central Florida, the U.S. government has authorized a new protected area, the Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge. The new refuge will host important threatened and endangered species and habitats, and will be located to allow for species adaptation from climate change …

The Impact Of Whoop Technology On Sleep, Recovery, And Performance In Naia Baseball Players, Nolan Harms

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

Many key factors – including but not limited to – sleep, nutrition, travel, stress, and practice influence the optimization of athletic performance. Although previous studies have investigated the use of wearable technology in sport to track several such factors, peer-reviewed research specific to WHOOP technology is limited at best. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of WHOOP technology on sleep, recovery, and batting performance in healthy NAIA baseball players. Data was collected over the course of 4 weeks of in-season play on 10 varsity NAIA baseball players (20.40 ± 0.97 years). All games – 18 total …

Sandhill Crane Activity In The Central Platte River Valley In Late May And Early June, Jenna M. Malzahn, Andrew J. Caven, Marin Dettweiler, Joshua D. Wiese

Nebraska Bird Review

In this report we discuss observations of Sandhill Cranes remaining in the Central Platte River Valley until early June 2018 and discuss potential explanations for this extended stay into the breeding season.

We detected two pairs of adult Sandhill Cranes in two different locations on 15 May 2018 (Table 1). We then detected three injured adult Sandhill Cranes in a third location on 16 May 2018 (Table 1). Two of the three Sandhill Cranes each had a missing leg and the third crane’s leg was broken above the tibiotarsal joint; however, all were still capable of foraging and flight. Later, …

Fall Field Report, August - November 2018, W. Ross Silcock

Nebraska Bird Review

As far as birds go, this was a relatively quiet season, but, as usual, there was much of interest to chew on. Most important in any report are range changes, major changes in expected numbers or early and late dates, all of which relate directly to the status, positive or negative, of a given species.

Waterfowl in general were only average in numbers; new high counts are rare these days compared with numbers 20 or so years ago. Two winter finches, Common Redpoll and Red Crossbill, that normally arrive in late fall, were virtually unreported. Notable range expansions are under …

Review: Canids Of The World: Wolves, Wild Dogs, Foxes, Jackals, Coyotes, And Their Relatives. José R. Castelló., Jonathan (Jon) Way

The Prairie Naturalist

Canids of the World is one of those reads where just when you think that something cannot be beat, this book comes out. What I mean by that is that I have read many works on wolves and other canids, most recently Nate Blakeslee’s American Wolf (Way 2017), and I have enjoyed and been enthralled with many of them. But Canids of the World may take the cake for being the most impressive book available on canids. For a modest price of just under $30.00, you can own a book that has over 600 amazing high-resolution glossy photographs of every …

New Breeding Record And Location For Wilson’S Phalarope (Phalaropus Tricolor) In The Nebraska Great Plains, Usa, Madison O. Sutton, Nico Arcilla

The Prairie Naturalist

Wilson’s phalarope (Phalaropus tricolor; Scolopacidae) is a migratory shorebird that relies on interior wetlands for foraging and breeding (Colwell and Jehl 1994, van Gils et al. 2018). Its global population status is unclear (Colwell and Jehl 1994, Lesterhuis and Clay 2010), and is variously listed as declining (Morrison et al. 2006, van Gils et al. 2018), increasing (Andres 2009, BirdLife International 2018), and exhibiting a long-term decline but recent stability (Sauer et al. 2011, Andres et al. 2012). Its global population estimate of 1.5 million birds has not been updated for 30 years, since 1988 (Colwell and Jehl 1994, Lesterhuis …

Review: Behavior Of The Golden Eagle: An Illustrated Ethogram. David H. Ellis (Illustrated By N. John Schmitt)., Jeremy E. Guinn

The Prairie Naturalist

Author David H. Ellis and illustrator N. John Schmitt deliver precisely what is promised in Behavior of the Golden Eagle: An Illustrated Ethogram. This “little volume,” as the author coins it, represents a single source for defining, identifying, and describing behaviors of the Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos). With the inclusion of Schmitt’s exceptional drawings, the book is a piece of art, as well as the most useful manual describing Golden Eagle behaviors. Nearly four decades earlier, Ellis (1979) authored the very first Golden Eagle ethogram—the set of repeated standard behaviors for a species called action patterns—and in his new book, …

Review: Edges And Rushes Of Minnesota: The Complete Guide To Species Identification, Welby R. Smith; Photography By Richard Haug, Edward S. Dekeyser

The Prairie Naturalist

Even the most seasoned individual with a plant identification background can relate to the difficulty of identifying sedges and rushes to the species level. Historically, one has had to rely on dichotomous keys to identify a sedge or rush species in the field. After hours of frustration, a person ends up collecting the plant and, if lucky, bringing the collection back to a herbarium where it can be compared to known specimens. I have been collecting and identifying sedge and rush species for over 25 years, and author Welby Smith along with photographer Richard Haug have published what I believe …

Red-Bellied Snake (Storeria Occipitomaculata) Copulation In South Dakota, Drew R. Davis

The Prairie Naturalist

Storeria occipitomaculata is a small, terrestrial species of snake that occurs across much of eastern North America (Ernst and Barbour 1989, Ernst 2002, Ernst and Ernst 2003). Due to this widespread distribution, S. occipitomaculata faces varied climates that likely result in regional differences in reproductive phenology. Much of what is known about the reproductive ecology of S. occipitomaculata has been documented from the southeastern portion of its range in North America (South Carolina: Semlitsch and Moran 1984, North Carolina: Willson and Dorcas 2004), though Blanchard (1937) studied a population from northern Michigan. The exact reproductive timing in this …

Testfordep: An R Package For Modern Distribution-Free Tests And Visualization Tools For Independence, Jeffrey C. Miecznikowski, En-Shuo Hsu, Yanhua Chen, Albert Vexler

The R Journal

This article introduces testforDEP, a portmanteau R package implementing for the first time several modern tests and visualization tools for independence between two variables. While classical tests for independence are in the base R packages, there have been several recently developed tests for independence that are not available in R. This new package combines the classical tests including Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient method, Kendall’s τ rank correlation coefficient method and Spearman’s ρ rank correlation coefficient method with modern tests consisting of an empirical likelihood based test, a density-based empirical likelihood ratio test, Kallenberg data-driven test, maximal information coefficient …

Smm: An R Package For Estimation And Simulation Of Discrete-Time Semi-Markov Models, Vlad Stefan Barbu, Caroline Bérard, Dominique Cellier, Mathilde Sautreuil, Nicolas Vergne

The R Journal

Semi-Markov models, independently introduced by Lévy (1954), Smith (1955) and Takacs (1954), are a generalization of the well-known Markov models. For semi-Markov models, sojourn times can be arbitrarily distributed, while sojourn times of Markov models are constrained to be exponentially distributed (in continuous time) or geometrically distributed (in discrete time). The aim of this paper is to present the R package SMM, devoted to the simulation and estimation of discrete-time multi-state semi-Markov and Markov models. For the semi-Markov case we have considered: parametric and non-parametric estimation; with and without censoring at the beginning and/or at the end of sample …

Conference Report: Latinr 2018, Laura Acion, Natalia Da Silva, Riva Quiroga

The R Journal

LatinR <- Latin American Conference about the Use of R in Research + Development (LatinR) was an international conference whose goal was bringing together the Latin Ameri can R community. The inagural LatinR took place at the Universidad de Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on September 3 to 5, 2018. About 100 participants from more than 10 differ ent countries (e.g., Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Spain, United States, Canada) attended LatinR.

LatinR will be an annual meeting that will rotate among different countries in Latin America. LatinR 2019 will be hosted by the Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago de Chile on September 25 to 27

Bnclassify: Learning Bayesian Network Classifiers, Bojan Mihaljević, Concha Bielza, Pedro Larrañaga

The R Journal

The bnclassify package provides state-of-the art algorithms for learning Bayesian network classifiers from data. For structure learning it provides variants of the greedy hill-climbing search, a well-known adaptation of the Chow-Liu algorithm and averaged one-dependence estimators. It provides Bayesian and maximum likelihood parameter estimation, as well as three naive-Bayes specific methods based on discriminative score optimization and Bayesian model averaging. The implementation is efficient enough to allow for time-consuming discriminative scores on medium sized data sets. The bnclassify package provides utilities for model evaluation, such as cross-validated accuracy and penalized log-likelihood scores, and analysis of the underlying networks, including network …

Networktoolbox: Methods And Measures For Brain, Cognitive, And Psychometric Network Analysis In R, Alexander P. Christensen

The R Journal

This article introduces the NetworkToolbox package for R. Network analysis offers an intuitive perspective on complex phenomena via models depicted by nodes (variables) and edges (correlations). The ability of networks to model complexity has made them the standard approach for modeling the intricate interactions in the brain. Similarly, networks have become an increasingly attractive model for studying the complexity of psychological and psychopathological phenomena. NetworkToolbox aims to provide researchers with state-of-the-art methods and measures for estimating and analyzing brain, cognitive, and psychometric networks. In this article, I introduce NetworkToolbox and provide a tutorial for applying some the package’s functions to …

The Utiml Package: Multi-Label Classification In R, Adriano Rivolli, Andre C.P.L.F. De Carvalho

The R Journal

Learning classification tasks in which each instance is associated with one or more labels are known as multi-label learning. The implementation of multi-label algorithms, performed by different researchers, have several specificities, like input/output format, different internal functions, distinct programming language, to mention just some of them. As a result, current machine learning tools include only a small subset of multi-label decomposition strategies. The utiml package is a framework for the application of classification algorithms to multi-label data. Like the well known MULAN used with Weka, it provides a set of multi-label procedures such as sampling methods, transformation strategies, threshold functions, …

Stilt: Easy Emulation Of Time Series Ar(1) Computer Model Output In Multidimensional Parameter Space, Roman Olson, Kelsey L. Ruckert, Won Chang, Klaus Keller, Murali Haran, Soon-Il An

The R Journal

Statistically approximating or “emulating” time series model output in parameter space is a common problem in climate science and other fields. There are many packages for spatio-temporal modeling. However, they often lack focus on time series, and exhibit statistical complexity. Here, we present the R package stilt designed for simplified AR(1) time series Gaussian process emulation, and provide examples relevant to climate modelling. Notably absent is Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation – a challenging concept to many scientists. We keep the number of user choices to a minimum. Hence, the package can be useful pedagogically, while still applicable to real …

Northern Saw-Whet Owl (Aegolius Acadicus) Nest Box Project: The First Seven Years, Wayne J. Mollhoff

Nebraska Bird Review

This report summarizes the first seven years of the nest box project for the Northern Saw-whet Owl in Nebraska. The project was initiated with several goals in mind: 1) to document breeding in Nebraska, 2) to get an idea of the breeding range of saw-whet owls, and 3) to establish their breeding phenology. The project started in 2012 with the placement of 29 boxes. Six boxes were added in 2015, four more in 2016, and eight in 2017.

This study, along with an ongoing study in South Dakota (Drilling 2015), makes it appear that we share an isolated breeding population. …

2018 Fall Banding Migration Summary, Chadron State Park, Chris Murray

Nebraska Bird Review

In order to better understand wild birds and their migration, Bird Conservancy of the Rockies conducted bird monitoring for the 11th straight year at our fall migration banding station in Chadron State Park within the Pine Ridge Region of Nebraska. Operated in collaboration with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, this station is open to the public and visited by school groups to serve as an outdoor classroom. Among our goals are to enhance the public’s appreciation of birds as well as their understanding of threats to bird survival and the role of science in bird conservation. Serving as an …