Life Sciences Commons^™

In Search Of Super-Scents For Carnivore Attraction, Megan Doxey

Library/Life Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition 2024

Find chemical scents that are more effective at alluring North American predators than what is commercially available, then isolate the scent’s chemical structure to create better trapping lures.

Exploring Soil Plant Relationships To Inform Seed Selection For Rangeland Restoration, Mallory Hinton, April Hulet, Matt Madsen, Raechel Hunsaker, Shannon Nelson

Library/Life Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition 2024

Seeding plants post disturbance on rangelands is a challenge due to unique ecological and environmental conditions such as:

• Limited water availability1

• Invasive species2

• Soil health3

• Native seed supplies4

One of the key factors to address these challenges and have a successful seeding is to understand the relationship between soil properties and the plants that grow within them.

Effects Of Grass Species And Soil Types On Early Successional Forb Species, Raechel Hunsaker, April Hulet, Matthew Madsen, Mallory Hinton, Derek Tilley

Library/Life Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition 2024

Many early successional plant species have been considered weeds because of their lack of forage value for livestock (Whitson and Burrill, 2009). However, these early successional plant species have the potential to aid rangeland restoration in a variety of ways including:

• Food source for pollinators (Dumroese et al., 2016).

• Soil partitioning for climax communities of native perennials (Tilley et al., 2022).

• Competition against invasive annual species (Leger et al., 2014). To determine which early colonizing (or pioneer) species have the greatest restoration potential, interspecific competitive interactions should be evaluated.

Cattle Resource Selection On Late Fall Sagebrush Steppe Habitat In Idaho, United States, Larry Cole Kempton, April Hulet, Jim Sprinkle, Randy Larsen, Jameson Brennan, Dan Lauritzen, Sawyer Fonnesbeck, Justin Hatch

Library/Life Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition 2024

Introduction Targeted cattle grazing is increasingly recognized as an effective method for controlling invasive grasses like cheatgrass in sagebrush-steppe ecosystems1. However, there's a lack of understanding about cattle distribution and their preference for invasives during the dormant season. One statistical model that provides insights into cattle distribution and the selection of resources (e.g., vegetation) is the Resource Selection Function (RSF) model2. Our research objective is to utilize a resource selection function to predict the probability of cattle selecting a particular location, in our case areas with higher cheatgrass abundance, based on environmental variables. The development of a resource selection function …

Population Monitoring Of Beaver Mountain Groundsel, Autumn Gudmundsen, Loreen Allphin, Madison Huie, Steve Flinders

Library/Life Sciences Undergraduate Poster Competition 2024

2nd Place Poster Design

• Beaver Mountain groundsel, Packera castoreus, is a rare flowering plant, endemic to the Tushar Mountains of Utah (fig.1 & 2).

• P. castoreus has been classified as high priority for monitoring and conservation by the Utah Native Plant Society1.

• The plants in the Tushars are some of the least studied in Utah.

• There have been conservation concerns for rare alpine species recently due to increased threats. Threats to this species include:

• Grazing from large ungulates (mountain goats, deer, & elk)2

• Human impacts, especially hiking1

• Climate change1

• To better understand …