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Full Issue 47(2)

International Journal of Speleology

No abstract provided.

Sea Urchins Reduce Fish Grazing On Algae, June 2018, Alice Beittel

Monteverde Institute: Tropical Ecology and Conservation

Overfishing of reef ecosystems poses a threat to key trophic interactions that regulate the food competition between fish and the sea urchin, Diadema mexicanum. An important ecosystem engineer, D. mexicanum can help control for positive coral growth at intermediate levels but at high levels can erode coral reefs and at low levels results in algae dominated reefs. Due to the overfishing of echinoderm-predators in Bahía de Cuajiniquil, Costa Rica. D. mexicanum populations are less regulated and have the potential to outcompete other herbivorous fish. My overarching question is how does Diadema mexicanum grazing impact fish feeding intensity? To answer this …

Foraging And Feeding Guild Characteristics In Relation To Fishes Chased From Microspathodon Dorsalis Nesting Territories, June 2018, Jenna Sparks

Monteverde Institute: Tropical Ecology and Conservation

Recognizing nest predators is an important adaptation for successful reproduction. Nest guarding ability is likely, in part, a sexually selected trait. Male giant damselfish (Microspathodon dorsalis) defend by chasing and biting at fishes that encroach upon their nests. In my study, I observed the relationship between intruder fish phenotype and behavior and response of 16 guarding males. In a series of 10-minute observation periods, I determined that Acapulco damselfish (Stegastes acapulcoensis) were chased away the most times. To account for variability of fish presence, I additionally noted the number of chases by resident M. dorsalis, standardized for the number of …

The Effects Of Forest Fragmentation On Avian Nest Predation In The Monteverde Region, June 2018, Sara Gibbons

Monteverde Institute: Tropical Ecology and Conservation

Habitat fragmentation is the division and reduction of a large, continuous area of habitat into smaller pieces. In nearly all cases tropical rain forest fragmentation has led to a loss of local species due to an increase in predators, a shift in microclimate, and a decrease in habitat area. Forested avian species are especially affected, showing a significant decrease in abundance and nest success in forest fragments. I investigated the predation rates on thrush nests in two fragmented sites. The first site was La Calandria, which is an isolated forest patch. The second site was Bajo Del Tigre which is …

Application Of Modern Foraminiferal Assemblages To Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction: Case Studies From Coastal And Shelf Environments, Christian Haller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of paleoenvironmental studies is to reconstruct characteristics of the past environment from fossil assemblages preserved in sedimentary strata. Thus, studies of modern surface assemblages, quantitatively correlated to the environmental parameters, are required before reliable interpretations can be made. For this dissertation, two different techniques were applied in two case studies: a reconstruction making use of a benthic foraminiferal transfer function from the intertidal marshes in the eastern Mississippi Sound, Alabama/Mississippi, and a qualitative reconstruction of ocean current activity on the Western Australian shelf.

Modern salt-marsh foraminifera were collected from Grand Bay, Pascagoula, Fowl River, and Dauphin Island across …

Rain Rituals As A Barometer Of Vulnerability In An Uncertain Climate, L. Jen Shaffer

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

Researchers and aid agencies, seeking to improve their understanding of local climate change responses, adaptation, and vulnerability, frequently interact with communities around the world who strongly emphasize their religious beliefs and practices. Dismissal and misunderstandings of these local perspectives can slow assessments of local climate vulnerability and development of adaptive capacity. In this paper, I show how analysis of rain ritual failure exposes the multiple stressors Ronga communities in southern Mozambique face, and as such, serves as a proxy measure for climate vulnerability at the local level. Oral histories and targeted interviews with participating elders, local chiefs, and community members …

New Records Of Guano-Associated Minerals From Caves In Northwestern Borneo, Donald A. Mcfarlane, Joyce Lundberg

International Journal of Speleology

Recent studies of ancient bat guano deposits in the caves of Gunung Mulu National Park and Niah National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia, have resulted in noteworthy records of phosphate minerals from these environments, including variscite, nano-particulate silica, fluorapatite, and niter.

Tampa From Shell Mount To Modern Town, Kenneth W. Mulder

Sunland Tribune

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Sunland Tribune

Sunland Tribune

No abstract provided.

Personal History Ethnography In Environmental Anthropology: A Methodological Case Study, Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

The study of the relationship between humans and the environment and the ways in which humans use, abuse, or protect the environment is in part a study of motivation. Understanding the basis for motivation requires not just understanding individual or community sentiment towards the environment but researching the cultural norms, values and beliefs that underlie and foster cultural perspectives in the first place. But how do we begin to determine where, when and how those cultural norms, values, beliefs get developed, taught and inculcated?

The following paper presents the collection of life hisories as one methodological approach to accessing the …

Determining Potential Uptake Pathways Of Persistent Organic Pollutants And Heavy Metals In Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Puerto Rico, Ashley Huber

USF St. Petersburg campus Master's Theses (Graduate)

Fiddler Crab (U. rapax) tissue, mangrove tissue and sediment from crab burrows were collected in Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Puerto Rico, to quantitate Persistent Organic Pollutants (OCs, PCBs, PBDEs) and selected heavy metals (cadmium, barium, mercury, lead, vanadium, chromium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, arsenic and selenium). Once quantified, the concentrations were applied to a bioconcentration factor equation to determine potential uptake pathways of the target analytes. Bioconcentration factors determined that fiddler crabs were the most efficient at concentrating OC pesticides, while mangroves were the most efficient at concentrating PCBs and heavy metals.

Impacts Of 40 Years Of Land Cover Change On Water Quality In Tampa Bay, Florida, Matthew J. Mccarthy, Frank E. Muller-Karger, Daniel Otis, Pablo Méndez-Lázaro

Marine Science Faculty Publications

Land cover changes in the Tampa Bay watershed (Florida) over the past four decades were examined along with precipitation and wind observations to help understand causes of long-term changes in turbidity and chlorophyll concentration within the Tampa Bay estuary. Water quality showed a statistically significant relationship to land cover fraction in the watershed compared to long-term precipitation or wind stress. Redundancy Analyses with Akaike’s Information Criterion and non-parametric multiple regressions determined that turbidity and chlorophyll concentration decreased bay-wide from 1974–2012 with increased developed land fraction (R2 > 0.75, p-value < 0.05). Various segments of the estuary showed different significant responses to developed land (R2 > 0.75, p-value < 0.05), agricultural land (R2 > 0.93, p-value < 0.02), bare land (R2 = 0.77, p-value = 0.001), and wind stress (R2 = 0.91, p-value = 0.04) at different times of year.

Storm Surge Reconstruction And Return Water Level Estimation In Southeast Asia For The 20th Century, Alba Cid, Thomas Wahl, Don P. Chambers, Sanne Muis

Marine Science Faculty Publications

We present a methodology to reconstruct the daily maximum storm surge levels, obtained from tide gauges, based on the surrounding atmospheric conditions from an atmospheric reanalysis (20th Century Reanalysis—20CR). Tide gauge records in Southeast Asia are relatively short, so this area is often underrepresented in studies based on long observational records, and there are just a few studies that have analyzed storm surge trends, variability or return water levels (RWLs) from numerical models in this area. Here we develop, calibrate, and validate a multivariate linear regression model that relates the storm surge with the principal components of the local atmospheric …

Usft 2018-2019 Usf Libraries Annual Report, Usf Libraries

Library Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Automated Classification Of Dolphin Echolocation Click Types From The Gulf Of Mexico, Kaitlin E. Fraiser, Marie A. Roch, Melissa S. Soldevilla, Lance P. Garrison, John A. Hildebrand

C-IMAGE Publications

Delphinids produce large numbers of short duration, broadband echolocation clicks which may be useful for species classification in passive acoustic monitoring efforts. A challenge in echolocation click classification is to overcome the many sources of variability to recognize underlying patterns across many detections. An automated unsupervised network-based classification method was developed to simulate the approach a human analyst uses when categorizing click types: Clusters of similar clicks were identified by incorporating multiple click characteristics (spectral shape and inter-click interval distributions) to distinguish within-type from between-type variation, and identify distinct, persistent click types. Once click types were established, an algorithm for …

Wangari Maathai The Educator: Straddling Tradition And Modernity, Namulundah Florence

Journal of Global Education and Research

Wangari Muta Mary Jo Maathai’s (April 1, 1940 – September 25, 2011) public image highlights her nationality, her education both in and outside Kenya, her establishment of the Green Belt Movement (GBM) for which she received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, and her political activism. Advocates for female empowerment take solace in success stories like Maathai’s rise from a village girl to become a global icon of leadership. Yet, her mobility was more circumstantial than it was deliberate, and is inseparable from the uneasy compromise between the traditional gender roles of her youth with the critical consciousness nurtured in …

Presence And Prevalence Of Microplastics In The Water And Marine Organisms Of The Gulf Of Santa Elena, Guanacaste, Costa Rica, December 2017, Eliot Headley

Monteverde Institute: Tropical Ecology and Conservation

Marine environments are sinks for microplastic pollution. Microplastics are widely dispersed through the world’s Ocean and can be fibrous. Synthetic microfibers shed from clothing, wash into rivers, and eventually into the Ocean. These microplastic pieces can be deleterious to marine organisms and the humans that consume them. My aim was to investigate the presence and prevalence of microplastics in the Gulf of Santa Elena, Costa Rica. Microplastics were collected through a plankton net and through dissection of fish guts from local fishermens’ catch. Microplastics, most of which microfibers, were observed in every plankton net sample and in six of the …

Light From Dark: A Relictual Troglobite Reveals A Broader Ancestral Distribution For Kimulid Harvestmen (Opiliones: Laniatores: Kimulidae) In South America, Abel Pérez-González, F. Sara Ceccarelli, Bruno G. O. Monte

KIP Articles

A new troglobitic harvestman, Relictopiolus galadriel gen. nov et sp. nov., is described from Olhos d’Água cave, Itacarambi, Minas Gerais State, Brazil. Morphological characters, including male genitalia and exomorphology, suggest that this species belongs to the family Kimulidae, and it appears to share the greatest similarities with Tegipiolus pachypus. Bayesian inference analyses of a molecular dataset strongly support the inclusion of this species in Kimulidae and confirm the hypothesized sister-group relationship between R. galadriel and T. pachypus. A time calibrated phylogeny indicates that these sister-taxa diverged from a common ancestor approximately 40 Mya, during the Paleogene. The current range of …

Cave Monitoring In The Béke And Baradla Caves (Northeastern Hungary): Implications For The Conditions For The Formation Cave Carbonates, György Czuppon, Attila Demény, Szabolcs Leél-Őssy, Mihály Óvari, Mihály Molnár, József Stieber, Klaudia Kiss, Krisztina Kármán, Gergely Surányi, László Haszpra

International Journal of Speleology

In order to use speleothems in the reconstruction of past climate and environmental changes it is necessary to understand the environmental and hydrological processes that determine the physico-chemical conditions of carbonate precipitation and hence speleothem formation. Therefore, in this study an extended monitoring program was conducted in the Béke and Baradla caves located in the Aggtelek region (Northeastern Hungary). The studied caves are rich in speleothem and flowstone occurrences with great potential for paleoclimatology studies. The monitoring activity included measurements of atmospheric and cave temperatures, CO₂ concentration in cave air, as well as chemical and isotopic compositions of water …

Crow's Nest, October 23, 2017, Crow's Nest Staff

Crow's Nest

The October 23, 2017, issue of the Crow's Nest.

Mobile-Based Sidewalk Inventory App For Smart Communities, Health, And Safety, Madhav Erraguntla, Dursun Delen, Rupesh K. Agrawal, Karthic Madanagopal, Richard Mayer

Suburban Sustainability

As the United States and other nations strive to cope with the obesity epidemic (NCHS, 2015), progressive communities are developing sidewalk infrastructure to promote physical activity and health. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that community-based interventions like neighborhood walk, bike programs etc. have shown to be effective in promoting physical activity and health. Smart cities are embracing the development of community trails and promoting their use to increase physical activity among youth and adults. System implementation, data collection, and analysis were performed from January 2015 through July 2015. To promote these objectives, communities and cities need accurate information …

Technological Variability At Sibudu Cave: The End Of Howiesons Poort And Reduced Mobility Strategies After 62,000 Years Ago, Paloma De La Peña, Lyn Wadley

KIP Articles

We evaluate the cultural variation between the youngest Howiesons Poort layer (GR) and the oldest post-Howiesons Poort layers (RB-YA) of Sibudu Cave (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa). We first conducted a technological analysis, secondly we performed a cladistic study with all the technological traits and, finally, we compare the technological variability with other data from Sibudu (ochre, micromorphology, fauna and plant remains). The synapomorphies of the cladistical analysis show numerous lithic technological changes between the youngest Howiesons Poort and the oldest post-Howiesons Poort layers as previously concluded. However, some technological strategies that are present, yet uncommon, in the Howiesons Poort become abundant …

Figures And First Years: An Analysis Of Calculus Students' Use Of Figures In Technical Reports, Nathan J. Antonacci, Michael Rogers, Thomas J. Pfaff, Jason G. Hamilton

Numeracy

This three-year study focused on first-year Calculus I students and their abilities to incorporate figures in technical reports. In each year, these calculus students wrote a technical report as part of the Polar Bear Module, an educational unit developed for use in partner courses in biology, computer science, mathematics, and physics as part of the Multidisciplinary Sustainability Education (MSE) project at Ithaca College. In the first year of the project, students received basic technical report guidelines. In year two, the report guidelines changed to include explicit language on how to incorporate figures. In year three, a grading rubric was added …

Assessment Methods From Around The World Potentially Useful For Public Transport Projects, Eric Bruun, Marianne Vanderschuren

Journal of Public Transportation

The financial crisis in 2008/2009 has made many countries aware that public funds need to be managed better. A logical step is to identify methods that thoroughly assess the impacts of infrastructure and service investment. The authors argue that assessments should both identify and use performance indicators related to the ‘triple bottom line’, i.e. economic, social and environmental impacts.

This paper provides an overview of assessment methods used to evaluate public transport investments. Positive and negative aspects of various assessment tools are identified and discussed. Some developing world examples appear to be more elaborate and appropriate, than developed world examples, …

Habitat Use And Behaviours Of Introduced Muscovy Ducks (Cairina Moschata) In Urban And Suburban Environments, Joni Downs, Rebecca Loraamm, James Howard Anderson Jr., Jacqueline Perry, Jessica Bullock

Suburban Sustainability

Muscovy ducks (Cairina moschata) are native to South America, Central America, and Mexico. The species is commonly domesticated and raised for meat across the globe. Escaped or intentionally introduced populations have become established in many suburban areas, although they are little studied. A total of 642 individual time-activity budgets were collected for invasive Muscovy ducks in Tampa, Florida, USA, in order to quantify habitat use and behavioural patterns. Muscovy ducks utilized a variety of cover types, including open water, shoreline, grass, tree, shrub, and urban habitats. Muscovy ducks foraged by dabbling, gleaning, grazing, and probing, while occasionally obtaining, …

The Experimental Flow To The Colorado River Delta: Effects On Carbon Mobilization In A Dry Watercourse, Thomas S. Bianchi, David Butman, Peter A. Raymond, Nicholas D. Ward, Rory J. Kates, Karl W. Flessa, Hector Zamora, Ana Arellano, Jorge Ramirez, Eliana Rodriguez

Marine Science Faculty Publications

Here we report on the effects of an experimental flood on the carbon cycling dynamics in the dry watercourse of the Colorado River in Mexico. We observed post-flood differences in the degree of decay, age, and concentration of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), as well as dissolved CH₄ and CO₂ concentrations throughout the study site. Our results indicate that this flooded waterway was a limited source of CH₄ and CO₂ to the atmosphere during the event and that DOC age increased with time of flooding. Based on our findings, we suggest that the interplay between storage and …

Raptor Monitoring In The Middle Rio Grande Bosque Of Central New Mexico 2004-2016, Hawks Aloft, Inc.

Multi-Species Reports (Hawks Aloft)

No abstract provided.

Persistent Spatial Structuring Of Coastal Ocean Acidification In The California Current System, F. Chan, J. A. Barth, C. A. Blanchette, R. H. Byrne, F. Chavez, O. Cheriton, R. A. Feely, G. Friederich, B. Gaylord, T. Gouhier, S. Hacker, T. Hill, G. Hofmann, M. A. Mcmanus, B. A. Menge, K. J. Nielsen, A. Russell, E. Sanford, J. Sevadjian, L. Washburn

Marine Science Faculty Publications

The near-term progression of ocean acidification (OA) is projected to bring about sharp changes in the chemistry of coastal upwelling ecosystems. The distribution of OA exposure across these early-impact systems, however, is highly uncertain and limits our understanding of whether and how spatial management actions can be deployed to ameliorate future impacts. Through a novel coastal OA observing network, we have uncovered a remarkably persistent spatial mosaic in the penetration of acidified waters into ecologically-important nearshore habitats across 1,000 km of the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem. In the most severe exposure hotspots, suboptimal conditions for calcifying organisms encompassed up …

Monitoring Biodiversity Change Through Effective Global Coordination, Laetitia M. Navarro, Néstor Fernández, Carlos Guerra, Rob Guralnick, W Daniel Kissling, Maria Cecilia Londoño, Frank Muller-Karger, Eren Turak, Patricia Balvanera, Mark J. Costello, Aurelie Delavaud, Gy El Serafy, Simon Ferrier, Ilse Geijzendorffer, Gary N. Geller, Walter Jetz, Eun-Shik Kim, Hyejin Kim, Corinne S. Martin, Melodie A. Mcgeoch, Tuyeni H. Mwampamba, Jeanne L. Nel, Emily Nicholson, Nathalie Pettorelli, Michael E. Schaepman, Andrew Skidmore, Isabel Sousa Pinto, Sheila Vergara, Petteri Vihervaara, Haigen Xu, Tetsukazu Yahara, Mike Gill, Henrique M. Pereira

Marine Science Faculty Publications

The ability to monitor changes in biodiversity, and their societal impact, is critical to conserving species and managing ecosystems. While emerging technologies increase the breadth and reach of data acquisition, monitoring efforts are still spatially and temporally fragmented, and taxonomically biased. Appropriate long-term information remains therefore limited. The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) aims to provide a general framework for biodiversity monitoring to support decision-makers. Here, we discuss the coordinated observing system adopted by GEO BON, and review challenges and advances in its implementation, focusing on two interconnected core components — the Essential Biodiversity Variables as …

Virus Taxonomy In The Age Of Metagenomics, Peter Simmonds, Mike Adams, Mária Benkő, Mya Breitbart, J. Rodney Brister, Eric Carstens

Marine Science Faculty Publications

The number and diversity of viral sequences that are identified in metagenomic data far exceeds that of experimentally characterized virus isolates. In a recent workshop, a panel of experts discussed the proposal that, with appropriate quality control, viruses that are known only from metagenomic data can, and should be, incorporated into the official classification scheme of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). Although a taxonomy that is based on metagenomic sequence data alone represents a substantial departure from the traditional reliance on phenotypic properties, the development of a robust framework for sequence-based virus taxonomy is indispensable for the …