Life Sciences Commons^™

Understanding The Decline In Successful Cattle Pregnancies, Andre Tu Nguyen

Research on Capitol Hill

USU junior Andre, a local Loganer, studies computer science and biology.He has been working in an animal science lab. Over time, we have seen a decline in successful dairy cattle pregnancies. This is a huge cause for concern for Utah, with milk sales at an estimated value of $405 million in 2020. Andre’s work has been in studying a certain protein in pregnant cattle; now that he has determined there is a decrease in this protein over the course of the pregnancy, he hopes to see whether that might impact its viability. Andre got involved in research in a high …

Investigating Nest Box Utilization By Bumble Bees And Reproductive Development Of Male Bumble Bees, James Daniel Herndon

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Bumble bees (Bombus Latrielle) are a wide-spread group of pollinating insects that are important species to conserve across many environments to ensure both ecological and economic resiliency because they pollinate important agricultural, horticultural, and wild flora. Surprisingly, fundamental questions still remain about this important charismatic group of pollinators. The investigations in this thesis are but two of many topics that require further research. The topics investigated are understanding bumble bee nest site preferences and reproductive development of both sexes of bumble bees. The first experiment (Chapter 2) investigates whether nest boxes elevated off of the ground and attached to …

Stable Isotopes And The Ecology And Physiology Of Reptiles, Andrew M. Durso

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

When animals don’t have enough food, they have to “choose” between “spending” their limited energy on themselves or on their offspring. Biologists think that reptiles can make this choice quickly in response to different environments. But, it can be hard to study these choices because it is hard to convert between, for example, the number of eggs laid and the speed of healing a wound. By using stable isotope chemistry, we can collect more detailed and comparable information about how lizards and other animals spend their limited resources than with any other method. For example, lizards in the wild have …

Reproductive Tactics Of Aphidophagous Lady Beetles: Comparison Of A Native Species And An Invasive Species That Is Displacing It, Yukie Kajita

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Coccinella septempunctata L. (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) has been introduced to North America in recent decades, raising concerns of adverse impacts on native lady beetles, including the congeneric C. transversoguttata richardsoni (Brown). The central focus of my dissertation is to understand the importance of reproduction, in particular, in promoting invasion of C. septempunctata and its replacement of native lady beetles in alfalfa fields of western North America.

Studies were conducted to compare reproductive tactics of the invasive C. septempunctata and the native C. transversoguttata, by addressing: 1) maximum rate of reproduction of overwintered lady beetles, 2) population dynamics of the invasive …

Reproductive Strategies Of Northern Goshawks And Cooper's Hawks In North-Central New Mexico, Patricia L. Kennedy

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

I assumed that the reproductive strategies of the two Accipiter species investigated in this study, the northern Goshawk (A. gentilis) and the Cooper's hawk (A. cooperii), would be similar to the strategies of other monogamous raptors with sex role partitioning. Any differences in the species' reproductive strategies, particularly hunting strategies, were expected to be a function of their size differences. Contrary to predictions, results indicated that, in north-central New Mexico during brood rearing, both species had similar hunting strategies and utilized similar prey species. These results also indicated that the reproductive strategies of the Cooper's hawk …

Feeding Habits And Reproduction Of Three Sympatric Lizard Species From West-Central Utah, John B. Andre

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The feeding habits and reproduction of Uta stansburiana, Crotaphytus collaris and Cnemidophorus tigris during spring and summer 1976 are described. Feeding habits are expressed in percent total number and volume of prey items and frequency of occurrence of each prey category. Importance Values are also calculated. These values better illustrate the feeding habits of the lizard species than either percent total number and volume and frequency of prey category occurrence.

Lizards consume a variety of food items throughout the growing season. Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, Orthoptera and Arachnida are the major prey categories of U. stansburiana. The major prey categories …