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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Morphological And Behavioral Traits Associated With Locomotion In Lizards, Chase T. Kinsey
Morphological And Behavioral Traits Associated With Locomotion In Lizards, Chase T. Kinsey
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Morphology, locomotion, and behavior are co-adapted to optimize performance and ultimately fitness. Successfully navigating a complex environment is dictated by an animal’s locomotor behavior, and for some behaviors, its locomotor performance. The locomotor performance of an organism is directly related to the form and function of the structures involved in locomotion such that movement is efficient – that is, minimal loss of energy. The first chapter of this thesis focuses on the effects of obstacle placement and forelimb position on facultative bipedalism. Placing an obstacle beyond a lizard’s acceleration threshold did not affect the frequency of bipedal posture. Furthermore, the …
Fossil Trachemys (Testudines: Emydidae) From The Late Hemphillian Of Eastern Tennessee And Its Implications For The Evolution Of The Emydidae, Steven E. Jasinski
Fossil Trachemys (Testudines: Emydidae) From The Late Hemphillian Of Eastern Tennessee And Its Implications For The Evolution Of The Emydidae, Steven E. Jasinski
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Trachemys (Testudines: Emydidae) represents one of the most well-known turtles today. The evolution of Trachemys, while being heavily documented with various fossil representatives, is not well understood. Numerous fossils from the Gray Fossil Site in northeastern Tennessee are helping to elucidate the taxon’s evolution. The fossil Trachemys at the Gray Fossil Site represent a new species. A review of previously named Trachemys taxa reveals that a huge majority of them are not valid or have been previously misinterpreted. A phylogenetic analysis preformed on modern emydids and supposed fossil representatives of those genera also shows the evolution of a portion …
The Tick Genus Amblyomma In Africa: Phylogeny And Mutilocus Dna Barcoding, Omobolanle Kushimo
The Tick Genus Amblyomma In Africa: Phylogeny And Mutilocus Dna Barcoding, Omobolanle Kushimo
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The tick genus Amblyomma includes approximately 130 species, 28 of which are found on the African continent and/ or in Madagascar. In order to understand the evolutionary phylogeography of the genus, it is necessary to gain a better understanding of the relationships between African taxa. Therefore, the main goals of this work were to, (1) reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships of the African Amblyomma available to us and (2) test markers for their usefulness as barcoding tools to link unknown immature specimens to their corresponding adults. The mitochondrial gene markers used in this study (12SrDNA and COI) did not resolve the …
Beyond Building A Tree: Phylogeny Of Pitvipers And Exploration Of Evolutionary Patterns, Allyson Fenwick
Beyond Building A Tree: Phylogeny Of Pitvipers And Exploration Of Evolutionary Patterns, Allyson Fenwick
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
As generic and higher-scale evolutionary relationships are increasingly well understood, systematists move research in two directions: 1) understanding specieslevel relationships with dense taxon sampling, and 2) evaluating evolutionary patterns using phylogeny. In this study I address both foci of systematic research using pitvipers, subfamily Crotalinae. For direction one, I evaluate the relationships of 96% of pitvipers by combining independent sets of molecular and phenotypic data. I find the inclusion of species with low numbers of informative characters (i.e. less than 100) negatively impacts resolution of the phylogeny, and the addition of independent datasets has no effect on or a small …
Modeling And Partitioning The Nucleotide Evolutionary Process For Phylogenetic And Comparative Genomic Inference, Todd Castoe
Modeling And Partitioning The Nucleotide Evolutionary Process For Phylogenetic And Comparative Genomic Inference, Todd Castoe
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The transformation of genomic data into functionally relevant information about the composition of biological systems hinges critically on the field of computational genome biology, at the core of which lies comparative genomics. The aim of comparative genomics is to extract meaningful functional information from the differences and similarities observed across genomes of different organisms. We develop and test a novel framework for applying complex models of nucleotide evolution to solve phylogenetic and comparative genomic problems, and demonstrate that these techniques are crucial for accurate comparative evolutionary inferences. Additionally, we conduct an exploratory study using vertebrate mitochondrial genomes as a model …