Digital Commons Network^™

High Dispersal Ability Is Related To Fast Life-History Strategies, Noelle G. Beckman, James M. Bullock, Roberto Salguero-Gomez

Ecology Center Publications

1. Seed dispersal is an essential, yet often overlooked process in plant ecology and evolution, affecting adaptation capacity, population persistence and invasiveness. A species’ ability to disperse is expected to covary with other life-history traits to form dispersal syndromes. Dispersal might be linked to the rate of life history, fecundity or generation time, depending on the relative selection pressures of bethedging, kin competition or maintaining gene flow. However, the linkage between dispersal and plant life-history strategies remains unknown because it is difficult to observe, quantify and manipulate the influence of dispersal over large spatiotemporal scales.

2. We integrate datasets describing …

Educational Policies Committee Program Proposal, College Of Agriculture And Applied Sciences, June 15, 2018 - Animal Biotechnology, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Utah State University requests approval to offer the following Minor: Animal Biotechnology effective Fall 2018.

The Utah Statesman, June 12, 2018, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Large Animal Genetic Engineering Summit 2018 Proceedings, Utah State University

Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Science Faculty Publications

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the second Large Animal Genetic Engineering (LAGE) Summit in beautiful Park City, Utah. We hope that you enjoy the meeting and take advantage of your free time to get out and see what Park City has to offer. Our objectives for the summit are twofold: (1) to provide updates on genetic engineering technologies, including genome editing, and their biomedical and agricultural applications in academia and industry; and (2) to engage federal agencies, industry representatives and academic researchers in a policy development forum. We hope that this year’s meeting will build on …

Gastrinoma And Zollinger-Ellison Syndrome In Canids: A Literature Review And A Case In A Mexican Gray Wolf, Jason D. Struthers, Nick Robl, Valerie M. Wong, Matti Kiupel

Animal, Dairy, and Veterinary Science Student Research

Gastrinoma, an infrequent diagnosis in middle-aged dogs, occurs with nonspecific gastrointestinal morbidity. Laboratory tests can yield a presumptive diagnosis, but definitive diagnosis depends on histopathology and immunohistochemistry. We describe a malignant pancreatic gastrinoma with lymph node metastases and corresponding Zollinger–Ellison syndrome in a Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) and review this endocrine neoplasm in domestic dogs. A 12-y-old, captive, male Mexican gray wolf developed inappetence and weight loss. Abdominal ultrasonography revealed a thickened duodenum and peritoneal effusion. Two duodenal perforations were noted on exploratory celiotomy and were repaired. Persisting clinical signs led to a second celiotomy that …

Empirical Correspondence Between Trophic Transfer Efficiency In Freshwater Food Webs And The Slope Of Their Size Spectra, Thomas Mehner, Betty Lischke, Kristin Scharnweber, Katrin Attermeyer, Soren Brothers, Ursula Gaedke, Sabine Hilt, Sandra Brucet

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

The density of organisms declines with size, because larger organisms need more energy than smaller ones and energetic losses occur when larger organisms feed on smaller ones. A potential expression of density-size distributions are Normalized Biomass Size Spectra (NBSS), which plot the logarithm of biomass independent of taxonomy within bins of logarithmic organismal size, divided by the bin width. Theoretically, the NBSS slope of multi-trophic communities is exactly 1.0 if the trophic transfer efficiency (TTE, ratio of production rates between adjacent trophic levels) is 10% and the predator-prey mass ratio (PPMR) is fixed at 104 . Here we provide evidence …

Retooling Your Story: Using Visualizations To Demonstrate Impact, Andrea Payant, Becky Skeen, Liz Woolcott

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

No abstract provided.

Cattle First Aid, Basic Care, And Common Diseases In Show Cattle, Karah Nay, Matthew D. Garcia, Kerry A. Rood, Chelsea Walker

All Current Publications

This flip booklet gives information for cattle first aid, basic care, and common diseases, including symptoms and treatment.

Alternative Legume Species Can Reduce The Environmental Impacts Of Cattle, Elizabeth K. Stewart, Jennifer W. Macadam, Juan J. Villalba

All Current Publications

This fact sheet describes how alternative legume species can reduce the environmental impacts of cattle, grass versus legumes as livestock feed, benefits, and producer concerns.

Motor Affordance For Grasping A Safety Handle, Douglas W. Mcdannald, Manhoud Mansour, Garrett Rydalch, David A.E. Bolton

Kinesiology and Health Science Faculty Publications

Mere observation of objects in our surroundings can potentiate movement, a fact reflected by visually-primed activation of motor cortical networks. This mechanism holds potential value for reactive balance control where recovery actions of the arms or legs must be targeted to a new support base to avoid a fall. The present study was conducted to test if viewing a wall-mounted safety handle – the type of handle commonly used to regain balance – results in activation of motor cortical networks. We hypothesized that the hand area of the primary motor cortex would be facilitated shortly after visual access to a …

Sensitive High-Frequency Hearing In Earless And Partially Eared Harlequin Frogs (Atelopus), Molly C. Womack, Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard, Luis A. Coloma, Kim L. Hoke

Biology Faculty Publications

Harlequin frogs, genus Atelopus, communicate at high frequencies despite most species lacking a complete tympanic middle ear that facilitates high-frequency hearing in most anurans and other tetrapods. Here, we tested whether Atelopus are better at sensing high-frequency acoustic sound compared with other eared and earless species in the Bufonidae family, determined whether middle ear variation within Atelopus affects hearing sensitivity and tested potential hearing mechanisms in Atelopus. We determined that at high frequencies (2000‚Äì4000‚ÄÖHz), Atelopus are 10‚Äì34‚ÄÖdB more sensitive than other earless bufonids but are relatively insensitive to mid-range frequencies (900‚Äì1500‚ÄÖHz) compared with eared bufonids. Hearing among Atelopus species is …

The Effect Of Warmer Winters On The Demography Of An Outbreak Insect Is Hidden By Intraspecific Competition, Devin W. Goodsman, Guenchik Grosklos, Brian H. Aukema, Caroline Whitehouse, Katherine P. Bleiker, Nate G. Mcdowell, Richard S. Middleton, Chonggang Xu

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

Warmer climates are predicted to increase bark beetle outbreak frequency, severity, and range. Even in favorable climates, however, outbreaks can decelerate due to resource limitation, which necessitates the inclusion of competition for limited resources in analyses of climatic effects on populations. We evaluated several hypotheses of how climate impacts mountain pine beetle reproduction using an extensive 9‐year dataset, in which nearly 10,000 trees were sampled across a region of approximately 90,000 km², that was recently invaded by the mountain pine beetle in Alberta, Canada. Our analysis supports the hypothesis of a positive effect of warmer winter temperatures on …

High Interspecific Variation In Nutrient Excretion Within A Guild Of Closely Related Caddisfly Species, Jared A. Balik, Brad W. Taylor, Susan E. Washko, Scott A. Wissinger

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Understanding the amount of variation in functional traits between closely related species within guilds is critical for understanding links between community composition and ecosystem processes. Nutrient excretion is an important link between animals and their environments, and aquatic invertebrate communities can supply a considerable proportion of ecosystem nutrient demand via excretion. We quantified nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) excretion rates of 10 species of larval caddisflies that inhabit high‐elevation ponds and wetlands to determine the magnitude of variation in nutrient excretion within this guild. We found considerable interspecific variation in biomass‐specific excretion of nitrogen (eightfold differences), phosphorus (sevenfold differences), and …

Putting Making Into High School Computer Science Classrooms: Promoting Equity In Teaching And Learning With Electronic Textiles In Exploring Computer Science, Deborah A. Fields, Yasmin B. Kafai, Tomoko Nakajima, Joanna Goode, Jane Margolis

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Recent discussions of making have focused on developing out-of-school makerspaces and activities to provide more equitable and enriching learning opportunities for youth. Yet school classrooms present a unique opportunity to help broaden access, diversify representation, and deepen participation in making. In turning to classrooms, we want to understand the crucial practices that teachers employ in broadening and deepening access to making. In this paper, we investigate two high school teachers’ approaches in implementing a novel eight-week, electronic textiles unit within the Exploring Computer Science curriculum, where students designed wearable electronic textile projects with microcontrollers, sensors, and LEDs. We share teachers’ …

Bridge Inspection: Human Performance, Unmanned Aerial Systems And Automation, Sattar Dorafshan, Marc Maguire

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) have become of considerable private and commercial interest for a variety of jobs and entertainment in the past 10 years. This paper is a literature review of the state of practice for the United States bridge inspection programs and outlines how automated and unmanned bridge inspections can be made suitable for present and future needs. At its best, current technology limits UAS use to an assistive tool for the inspector to perform a bridge inspection faster, safer, and without traffic closure. The major challenges for UASs are satisfying restrictive Federal Aviation Administration regulations, control issues in …

On The Relationship Between Phylogenetic Diversity And Trait Diversity, Caroline M. Tucker, T. Jonathan Davies, Marc W. Cadotte, William D. Pearse

Biology Faculty Publications

Niche differences are key to understanding the distribution and structure of biodiversity. To examine niche differences, we must first characterize how species occupy niche space, and two approaches are commonly used in the ecological literature. The first uses species traits to estimate multivariate trait space (so‐called functional trait diversity, FD); the second quantifies the amount of time or evolutionary history captured by a group of species (phylogenetic diversity, PD). It is often—but controversially—assumed that these putative measures of niche space are at a minimum correlated and perhaps redundant, since more evolutionary time allows for greater accumulation of trait changes. This …

Behavioral And Spatial Responses Of Captive Coyotes To Human Activity, Jeffrey T. Schultz, Julie K. Young

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Human interactions can alter an animal’s behavior and utilization of its surroundings, and how this impacts the welfare of some captive wild animals is of growing concern. Structural enrichment shelters offer weather protection, reprieve space from other animals or humans, or resting space. Perimeter or open space may be important during periods of activity, such as foraging or play. This study addressed the effects of human activity on coyote behavioral budgeting and enclosure utilization. We predicted that human activity would affect coyote behavior and spatial utilization of enclosure space. Specifically, we hypothesized that human activity would prompt vigilant and other …

2nd Large Animal Genetic Engineering Summit 2018, Irina Polejaeva

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

The Indestructible Insect: Velvet Ants From Across The United States Avoid Predation By Representatives From All Major Tetrapod Clades, Brian G. Gall, Kari L. Spivey, Trevor L. Chapman, Robert J. Delph, Edmund D. Brodie Jr., Joseph S. Wilson

Biology Faculty Publications

Velvet ants are a group of parasitic wasps that are well known for a suite of defensive adaptations including bright coloration and a formidable sting. While these adaptations are presumed to function in antipredator defense, observations between potential predators and this group are lacking. We conducted a series of experiments to determine the risk of velvet ants to a host of potential predators including amphibians, reptiles, birds, and small mammals. Velvet ants from across the United States were tested with predator’s representative of the velvet ants native range. All interactions between lizards, free-ranging birds, and a mole resulted in the …

Temperature And Manure Placement In A Snowpack Affect Nutrient Release From Dairy Manure During Snowmelt, Peter A. Vadas, Melanie N. Stock, Gary W. Feyereisen, Francisco J. Arriaga, Laura Ward Good, Krishnapuram G. Karthikeyan

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Agricultural nutrient management is an issue due to N and P losses from fields and water quality degradation. Better information is needed on the risk of nutrient loss in runoff from dairy manure applied in winter. We investigated the effect of temperature on nutrient release from liquid and semisolid manure to water, and of manure quantity and placement within a snowpack on nutrient release to melting snow. Temperature did not affect manure P and NH4–N release during water extraction. Manure P release, but not NH4–N release, was significantly influenced by the water/manure solids extraction ratio. During snowmelt, manure P release …

Fish Behaviour In The Vicinity Of A Navigation Lock Complex: The Challenges, J. Vergeynst, Raf Baeyens, Johan Coeck, Ine Pauwels, Ingmar Nopens, Ans Mouton, Tom De Mulder

International Symposium on Hydraulic Structures

Hydraulic structures such as navigation locks, pumping stations and hydropower plants play an important role in navigation, water management and sustainable energy production. However, these structures may severely impact the aquatic ecosystem and freshwater fish in particular. In Belgium, the Albert Canal connecting the river Meuse to the river Scheldt, is an important migration route for European eel (Anguilla anguilla, critically endangered) and Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar, vulnerable). Both species have a downstream migrating phase in their lifecycle (respectively silver eels and salmon smolts), during which they are hampered by hydraulic structures. In the coming years, Archimedes screws are to …

Hydraulic And Ecological Requirements For The Design Of Stilling Basins At Flood Retention Basins With Ecological Passage, Sophia Haufe, Jürgen Stamm

International Symposium on Hydraulic Structures

Since the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) entered into force in 2000 also flood retention basins located in the main channel have to ensure the migration of aquatic organisms. Therefore conventional hydraulically optimized constructions have to be adjusted to meet this requirement. During the last two decades the design of the outlet structure and the configuration of the main channel itself were focused in research in Germany. The energy dissipating component is obviously in operation during flood conditions only. Due to this main function it is so far designed focusing on hydraulic standards. Complex constructions provide the ecological passage way …

Smart Baffles To Assist Upstream Culvert Passage Of Small-Bodied Fish, Joseph Cabonce, Hang Wang, Hubert Chanson

International Symposium on Hydraulic Structures

Current culvert designs are very similar to ancient designs. Some recognition of the ecological impact of culverts on natural streams and rivers led to changes in culvert design guidelines, too often associated with un-economical design recommendations. A simple triangular baffle system, developed at the University of Queensland, may assist upstream passage of small body-mass fish in box culvert structures on very flat bed slope, while inducing little reduction in discharge capacity at design flow conditions and creating sizeable slow flow regions in less-than-design flow conditions. The system was tested systematically in a near-full-scale physical facility, 0.5 m wide and 12 …

Dams Beyond Design Assumptions, Reinhard Pohl

International Symposium on Hydraulic Structures

Abstract For the first time the technical board “Dams and Weirs” of the German Association for Water Waste Water and Waste (DWA) published a guideline how to cope with loads beyond the design assumption. This implies to consider a possible residual risk, which was not so openly discussed in Germany in the past. This paper presents the main issues of the document DWA T1/2017, which gives a guideline how to cope with the risk of large dams and reservoirs.

Keywords: Dams, Design Assumptions, Residual Risk, Dam Safety, Dam Failure

The Utah Statesman, May 15, 2018, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Utah Agriculture Teachers’ Perceptions Of Teaching Urban And Non-Traditional Agriculture Content, Ashlee Cromer, Kelsey Hall, Tyson Sorensen, David Francis, Joshua Dallin

Applied Sciences, Technology, and Education Student Research

While agriculture teachers may focus on guiding students into agricultural and natural resource career pathways, many have expressed the need to prepare existing and upcoming agricultural educators with a more extensive set of skills and knowledge to better prepare students for a broader scope of career opportunities in agriculture. Agricultural education programs are expanding across the country, including more programs in urban areas, but agricultural education teachers often have little exposure or experiences related to less traditional agricultural careers that might be found in urban areas. Furthermore, agriculture teachers are often prepared to teach agricultural content through coursework that is …

Utah Agricultural Teachers' Perceptions Of Urban And Non-Traditional Agriculture Curriculum & Saes: An Application Of The Theory Of Planned Behavior, Ashlee Cromer, Kelsey Hall, Tyson Sorensen, David Francis, Joshua Dallin

Applied Sciences, Technology, and Education Student Research

While studies have been conducted to learn about urban students’ attitudes and motivations (Anderson, 2013) and the establishment of urban agricultural education programs (Brown & Kelsey, 2013), little attention has been devoted to understanding how prepared agricultural education teachers are in implementing curriculum, Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAEs), and career information about the global, national, and regional issues facing agriculture (e.g. climate change, urban agriculture, bioengineering, water quality, food security, bioenergy). Agricultural education teachers have indicated a need for professional development in these areas of new and emerging careers and technology (Perkins, Sorensen, Hall, Dallin, & Francis, 2017). This study fits …

Checklist Of Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea) From Managed Emergent Wetlands In The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley Of Arkansas, Phillip L. Stephenson, Terry Griswold, Michael S. Arduser, Ashley P. G. Dowling, David G. Krementz

All PIRU Publications

Background

Here we present the results from a two-year bee survey conducted on 18 managed emergent wetlands in the lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley of Arkansas, USA. Sample methods included pan traps, sweep netting and blue-vane traps. We document 83 bee species and morphospecies in 5 families and 31 genera, of which 37 species represent first published state records for Arkansas. The majority of species were opportunistic wetland species; only a small number were wetland-dependent species or species largely restricted to alluvial plains.

New information

We present new distributional records for bee species not previously recorded in managed emergent wetlands and …

Using Combined Microgravity And Radiation To Simulate Skeletal Muscle Damage In Space, Lori Caldwell

Utah Space Grant Consortium

Muscular atrophy, defined as the loss of muscle tissue, is a serious issue for immobilized patients on Earth and in human spaceflight, where microgravity prevents normal muscle loading. Developing countermeasures for atrophy in spaceflight will require extensive screening of pharmaceuticals for efficacy, safety, contraindications, and dosage schedule. Due to the cost of spaceflight and limited crew time aboard the International Space Station, high throughput screening of pharmaceuticals under real microgravity conditions is not feasible. While traditional ground-based atrophy studies using the rodent hind-limb unloading model are effective at inducing physiological changes similar to spaceflight, they are not suited for first …

Highly Compressible Origami Bellows For Microgravity Drilling-Debris Containment, Jared Butler

Utah Space Grant Consortium

No abstract provided.