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Seroton-Ing Down The Stress: Serotonergic Activity In Response To Predators In Threespined Stickleback (Gasterosteus Aculeatus), Michaela M. Rogers

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Animals constantly face stress in the environment due to rapid human-induced changes. A strong interest lies in the evolution of coping mechanisms that can help organisms deal with and respond to these stressors. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that is highly conserved across taxonomic groups and is upregulated in response to a broad range of stressors, including predator exposure. Serotonin upregulation can help organisms cope with the threat of a predator by decreasing fear and anxiety. Previous studies have shown an increase in serotonergic activity following acute predator exposures in mice, rats, and fish after only one exposure, but less is …

Assessing The Health And Behavioral Effects Of Turtle Racing On Eastern Box Turtles (Terrapene Carolina), Michelle K. Weaver

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Turtle racing involves the public capturing largely wild-caught box turtles (Terrapene spp.) and racing them at standalone events or at races incorporated into larger family events (e.g., festivals). These turtle races are legal in most states because of a lack of regulations and/or funding to enforce regulations that may exist. Moreover, we lack information on the potential effects (e.g., disease transmission, survival, movements, and general health) of races on the turtles that could help support the implementation of regulations. Our objective was to understand the short-term and long-term health and behavioral effects of turtle races on eastern box turtles (Terrapene …

Anti-Predator Behavior In Response To Conspecific Visual, Olfactory, And Damage Cues In The Three-Spined Stickleback, Claire E. Vanmeter

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Predation is a major source of mortality for prey, which creates selective pressures for avoiding predators whenever possible. As a result, many prey species have evolved different methods of communication to alert conspecifics of potential threats. However, it is unknown if conspecifics are able to distinguish between these cues and, as a result, interpret different levels of predation threat. I studied the ability of the three-spined stickleback to distinguish between environmental cues by exposing conspecifics to four different types of conspecific alarm cues, cues of predator-naïve conspecifics, visual cues of predator-exposed conspecifics, visual and olfactory predator-exposed conspecific cues, and visual, …

Late Cretaceous Marine Vertebrates From The Tarrant Formation, Tarrant County, Texas U.S.A, Aaron Johnson, Kenshu Shimada

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

The Tarrant Formation (middle Cenomanian: ca. 96 million years ago) is a stratigraphic member of the Upper Cretaceous Eagle Ford Group in Texas, U.S.A., and consists of calcareous sandstone formed near the East Texas Embayment of the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, an epicontinental seaway in North America. We examined vertebrate fossils from the Tarrant Formation based on specimens collected through surface collecting and bulk sampling from three localities in Tarrant County, Texas, including the type locality of a pachyrhizodontid fish, Polcynichthys lloydhilli. Our preliminary examination shows that the fossil fauna includes shark species such as Ptychodus anonymous, Archaeolamna sp., …

Rehabilitating An Aging Ichthyology Collection And Turning Into An Effective Teaching Tool For Organismal Biology, Emmy Delekta

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Natural history collections are crucial for understanding the world’s biodiversity. These collections also hold important value in educating students about biodiversity, particularly phenotypic diversity. The University of Louisville (UofL) Department of Biology holds a natural history collection, a wet collection of preserved fishes, that appears to have been maintained up through the 1990s. However, due to shifts in funding priorities and faculty interests, much of the collection was relocated and what remains has been neglected for many years. Here, we describe our efforts to rehabilitate, revitalize, and digitize what is left of UofL’s ichthyology collection - transforming it into a …

Habitiat Structure And Ecomorphology Of Fishes In Neotropical Blackwater Creeks., Devya Hemraj-Naraine

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Freshwater ecosystems provide habitat for a diversity of aquatic flora and fauna. However, anthropogenic activities like mining and pollution alters aquatic habitats and the ecosystem services they provide. In South America, which hosts one quarter of all freshwater fish species, aquatic habitats are under considerable encroachment from human development. We surveyed nine blackwater creeks tributary to the Demarara River along a major Highway in Guyana to determine whether fish morphology and community structure correlate with habitat characteristics among sites with different degrees of human impact. Twenty-three morphological traits were measured on 3-5 adult specimens of each species. The most abundant …

Functional Implications Reflected In Neurocranial Morphology Of Lamniform Sharks (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes), Jake J. Wood

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Lamniform sharks (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes) display diverse habitat preferences and lifestyles. Based on museum specimens and published illustrations, we examined the proportion of the anteroposterior length of the rostral, olfactory, optic, and otic regions with respect to the neurocranial length in each lamniform species as a proxy of relative importance of each sensory region (electroreception, olfaction, vision, and ‘coordination’) to its lifestyle. We show that: 1) Carcharias and Megachasma (ragged-tooth and megamouth) have short rostral and large otic regions indicative of slower-swimming pelagic lifestyles with elevated coordination for balancing in the water column; 2) Alopias pelagicus, A. vulpinus, …

Habitat Characteristics And Winter Use Of Woodpecker-Excavated Tree Cavities, Adrianna Yoder

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Avifauna are in decline in North America, including red-headed woodpeckers (Melanerpes erythrocephalus). Red-headed woodpeckers are negatively impacted by urbanization, which has decreased their ideal habitats of oak-savannas and through the management of urban trees there has been a reduction in the amount of tree decay, a necessary feature of suitable trees that woodpeckers can make cavities in. Cavities are created and used as nests in the breeding season (spring/summer) and as roost-sites in the non-breeding season (fall/winter). In the Chicagoland region, during the fall some red-headed woodpeckers migrate while others do not and remain overwinter, making them facultative …

Repeatability And Distribution Of Behavior Types Over Time And Across Populations In Free-Ranging Adult And Juvenile Ornate Box Turtles (Terrapene Ornata), Abigail Trautman

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

As studies continue to investigate inter-individual variation, it is becoming increasingly evident that individual animals have their own unique behavior type (personality; repeatable behaviors over time and context) that persists throughout their life. Behavior is simply different forms of motion, and a behavior type influences which motions (behaviors) are most likely to be on display. Behavioral types can influence resource acquisition, predation risk, and mating opportunities and thus can directly influence the fitness of any given individual. In this study, we examine the behavior types of free-ranging adult ornate box turtles (Terrapene ornata), including their repeatability and variation …

Relationship Between Learning And Bt In Ornate Box Turtles (Terrapene Ornata), Brianna M. Wilson

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Cognition is important to the individual animal and can help determine its role and impact on its ecological niche. Variation in cognition may influence the way animals interact with their environment and their performance in certain behaviors such as resource acquisition, range philopatry, and navigation. The question has been raised as to whether cognitive styles such as fast-slow or speed-accuracy types share a relationship with behavioral type. Animal personality (behavioral type) is made up of five axes: boldness, aggression, sociality, activity, and exploration. In this study, we investigate learning in a western Nebraska population of ornate box turtles (Terrapene …

An Optimal Patch Use Model For Nitrogen Foraging In Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, Xin Lin

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Optimal Foraging Theory has been widely used to study animal foraging behaviors, but has seldom been applied to symbiotic microbes like arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. To date we know little about how AM fungi make decisions to forage in different nutrient patches. To help address this gap we here apply Optimal Foraging Theory to understand how AM fungi forage for nitrogen. We focus on nitrogen because AM fungi need more nitrogen than their plant hosts and soil nitrogen availability can shift the relationship between AM fungi and their hosts from mutualism to parasitism. We present a stochastic dynamic programming model …

Effects Of Paternal Heat Exposure And Parental Care On The Development Of Offspring In Gasterosteus Aculeatus, Emma Borgert

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Humans are profoundly altering the abundance and distribution of organisms via climate change. In particular, warming temperatures are affecting marine and freshwater ecosystems by increasing physiological stress, limiting growth, and decreasing dissolved oxygen. With all this change occurring, an understanding of how organisms are going to cope is crucial. Transgenerational plasticity – when parental experiences alter offspring traits - can allow organisms to rapidly adapt to environmental change. Previous literature has focused on the role of maternal experiences on offspring traits, but paternal experiences are just as important. Fathers can influence their offspring in multiple ways, including changes via both …

Effect Of Temperature Variation On Endurance Swimming Capacity Of Juvenile White Sturgeon (Acipenser Transmontanus), Alex M. Stolberg

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

White sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus), a species within one of the most globally threatened taxa, are highly susceptible to changes in their environments due to unique life history traits. Specifically, juvenile white sturgeon are impacted by altered watershed dynamics caused by water diversion structures such as dams, weirs, irrigation ditches, or levees. One location of great concern is the Sacramento-San Joaquin (S-SJ) watershed where decades of water diversion has brought on changes to the temperature, flow, and management of the area. This study looks to primarily identify the impact of water temperature on the endurance swimming capacity of juvenile white sturgeon, …

Novel Model For Tau Protein Expression And Function: The Honeybee Brain, Abdallah F. Sher

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Scientists have long attempted to understand the mechanisms by which senescence occurs. Leading theories suggest that aging is an emergent property of natural selection’s prioritization of reproductive ability. Social insects, such as the honeybee (Apis mellifera) challenge this idea, separating colonies into reproductive and non-reproductive castes. Worker honeybees do not reproduce, suggesting that selection prioritizes tasks other than reproduction. Forager honeybees, for example, display improved cognitive and immune function compared to other behavioral phenotypes of bees, likely to support their ability to perform tasks such as navigating complex environments or making context-dependent decisions while foraging. Foragers are normally older honeybees, …

Phosphours Trasnport In Soil: Locating And Identifying A Limiting Element, Jeremy Giannone

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

The phosphorus (P) cycle is not well understood. While carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) have gas phases, P does not. Phosphorus runoff in waterways and its shortage are both understood since their causes are due to agricultural demands. Fertilizers increase the rate of phosphorus in the soil leading to greater runoff which then accumulates in the surrounding bodies of water.¹ From an economic perspective the phosphorus availability and food prices have a direct correlation. The instability of phosphate prices may have direct causation to the instability of the food and agriculture markets.²In order to deal with these …

Rapid Assesment Of Aquatic Insect Diversity And Abundance Used To Evaluate The Quality Of Stream Restoration, Kaleb Stephen Kindoll

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Stream and wetland restoration activities seek to improve the function of aquatic ecosystems. Measurement of the diversity and abundance of aquatic insects are commonly used to evaluate the success of restoration efforts, but these measurements are often very time consuming. In this study, we attempt to construct an efficient method that can be used to rapidly assess the diversity and abundance of aquatic insects as a measure of the quality of stream restoration. We suspended uniform sized pieces of cardboard paper coated with adhesive to trap insects in three different environments: one restored and two unrestored streams with similar characteristics. …

Identifying Olfactory Receptors In The Pole Borer, Neandra Brunnea (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), Kayla M. Hefner

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

The behavior of longhorned beetles (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) is strongly shaped by volatile compounds, which can dictate the selection of hosts and mates, segregate heterospecifics, and initiate oviposition. These compounds are primarily detected at the molecular level by the protein family of odorant receptors (ORs), which rapidly evolve in response to evolutionary changes such as diet or sociality. Thus, the OR gene family could provide great insight into the ecology and evolution of animals, especially when their chemical ecology is otherwise poorly understood. We are examining the ORs of the pole borer Neandra brunnea (Cerambycidae: Parandrinae), for which the specific role …

Historical Climate-Influenced Shifts In Flower Shape And Production Of A Common Annual Plant, Orange Jewelweed (Impatiens Capensis), Amber M. Stanley

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Climate change is a major human-mediated stressor that has been altering temperature patterns across the globe since the Industrial Revolution. In the Eastern United States, it has been projected that the average annual temperature will increase by 3-5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. Such environmental changes have the potential to disrupt key interactions between species. For example, the vast majority (ca. 90%) of flowering plants rely on animal pollinators to transfer pollen between individuals to reproduce. Higher temperatures cause many plant species to flower up to 3-4 weeks earlier in the year, but pollinator activity has not shifted with …

Initial Steps In Testing The Stress Gradient Hypothesis For Selenium Exposure In Soil Bacteria, Kristian J. Harris

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

The Stress Gradient Hypothesis (SGH) states that interspecific interactions should shift from competitive to facilitative interactions as environmental stress increases. Selenium (Se) is a naturally occurring metalloid that acts as an environmental pollutant and as an essential micronutrient. Due to its metallic properties, Se acts as an oxidative stress and can be toxic to plants and animals. Given this, Se in soil systems acts as an abiotic stress that influences species composition and species interactions. Within soils, bacteria and fungi have evolved to tolerate Se via detoxification and Se processing for respiration and studies show that metal detoxification traits like …

Assessing The Performance Of Dna Extraction Kits And Loci For Dna Metabarcoding Diet Analysis Of Pastured Chickens, Kantima Thongjued

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Diet analysis is a valuable tool to understand animal feeding behavior. However, validation of workflows for DNA-based diet analysis often lack experimental evaluation with positive controls. To establish a methodology for diet analysis in organic, pasture-raised chickens (as part of ongoing research), we conducted a feeding trial experiment with a mock diet community to determine the efficacy of commonly used DNA extraction kits and primer sets. Six backyard hens were hand fed 22 known food items including insects and plants and monitored for their defecation for eight hours. We evaluated the efficacy of three DNA extraction kits, three primer sets …

Postnatal Developmental Trends In Membrane Excitability And Bk Channel Function In The Rodent Hippocampus, Michael S. Hunsberger

Dissertations (1934 -)

This dissertation outlines the postnatal development of excitability as well as expression and function of BK potassium channels in hippocampal neurons. I used patch clamp electrophysiology to measure how neuronal action potential waveforms and action potential firing frequencies change in early development, and how pharmacological blockade of BK channels affects these properties in hippocampal neurons. I also describe how the protein expression of the BK channel pore-forming α subunit and mRNA expression of different variants of the pore forming α subunit and auxiliary beta-4 subunit changes with development. I demonstrate in both cultured rat hippocampal neurons across the first seven …

Undergraduate And Graduate Course Descriptions, 2023 Spring, Wright State University

Course Descriptions

Wright State University undergraduate and graduate course descriptions from Spring 2023.

Longwood Magazine 2023 Spring, Longwood University

Alumni Newsletters & Bulletins

No abstract provided.

Book Of Abstracts, Seton Hall University

Petersheim Academic Exposition

No abstract provided.

Gsl Researcher (Spring 2023)

GSL Researcher

GSL Researcher (Spring 2023)

Greetings

People

Range and pasture update

Ranch update

Technical notes

Highlighted research

Nebraska ranch practicum

Recent publications

Dealing With “Humanewashing” Claims: Vital Farms’ Crucial Next Step, Bryce Janke, Cole Johnson, Kieran Mcwilliams, Justin Morrow, Isabelle Schmidt

B-Corp Case Studies by UNL Raikes Seniors

Vital Farms prides itself in their ethical and environmentally-friendly production of pasture-raised eggs, butter, and ghee. A popular tagline for the company is “keeping it bullsh*t-free.” This is core to their company mission and values. However, they are currently facing a PETA class action lawsuit for potential humanewashing and greenwashing, essentially false advertising. So, what happens when the Certified B-Corporation is under attack for the very thing that sets it apart from its competition? Is it possible to rebuild trust with the public and regain ethical standing after bad PR? What are humanewashing and greenwashing, and is Vital Farms guilty?

Chronicle, Maria Hernandez, Alyssa Monroe, Emily Houck, Laisha Barguiarena, Lily Hastings, Lucy Hernandez, Nick Longo, Sam Metcalf, Anastasia Crist, Ghazi Ahmad, Andy Langager

Campus Chronicle

No abstract provided.

2022-2023 Program And Abstracts: Celebration Of Student Scholarship, Morehead State University. Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program.

2023 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The 2022-2023 Program and Abstracts for the Celebration of Student Scholarship at Morehead State University held on April 19, 2023. A Showcase of Student Research, Scholarship, Creative Work, and Performance Arts.

Obesity Management Program, Mayedel San Jose

Cohort XI

Obesity has been a growing epidemic over the last few decades. Obesity and being overweight contribute to numerous chronic health conditions including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome. Multifaceted treatments recommended include lifestyle/behavioral therapy, health education, pharmacotherapy, and sometimes bariatric surgery. Due to the variety of complications and patient circumstances, patients need ongoing follow-up, reevaluation, and oftentimes, long-term treatment. This poses adherence issues to treatment plans. This quality improvement project's purpose is to improve therapy adherence and quality of life outcomes for patients with obesity by providing education and support for healthier lifestyle choices within the primary care clinic …

Joint Force Quarterly 109 (2nd Quarter, April 2023), National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly ARCHIVES

No abstract provided.