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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Four Types Of Activities That Affect Animals: Implications For Animal Welfare Science And Animal Ethics Philosophy, D. Fraser, A. M. Macrae
Four Types Of Activities That Affect Animals: Implications For Animal Welfare Science And Animal Ethics Philosophy, D. Fraser, A. M. Macrae
David Fraser, PhD
People affect animals through four broad types of activity: (1) people keep companion, farm, laboratory and captive wild animals, often while using them for some purpose; (2) people cause deliberate harm to animals through activities such as slaughter, pest control, hunting, and toxicology testing; (3) people cause direct but unintended harm to animals through crop production, transportation, night-time lighting, and many other human activities; and (4) people harm animals indirectly by disturbing ecological systems and the processes of nature, for example by destroying habitat, introducing foreign species, and causing pollution and climate change. Each type of activity affects vast numbers …
Positive Interactions Among Foraging Seabirds, Marine Mammals And Fishes And Implications For Their Conservation, Richard R. Veit, Nancy M. Harrison
Positive Interactions Among Foraging Seabirds, Marine Mammals And Fishes And Implications For Their Conservation, Richard R. Veit, Nancy M. Harrison
Publications and Research
There is increasing recognition of the importance of “positive interactions” among species in structuring communities. For seabirds, an important kind of positive interaction is the use of birds of the same species, birds of other species, and other marine predators such as cetaceans, seals and fishes as cues to the presence of prey. The process by which a single bird uses, say, a feeding flock of birds as a cue to the presence of prey is called “local enhancement” or “facilitation.” There are subtly different uses of each of these terms, but the issue we address here is the ubiquity …
Community Perceptions Of Grivet Monkey Crop Depredation In The Ethiopian Highlands: Implications For Primate Conservation, Aschalew Alelign, Meheretu Yonas
Community Perceptions Of Grivet Monkey Crop Depredation In The Ethiopian Highlands: Implications For Primate Conservation, Aschalew Alelign, Meheretu Yonas
Human–Wildlife Interactions
Human–primate conflicts in Africa have been increasing due to increased human population growth and the resulting competition for forest resources. The Ethiopian Highlands in northern Ethiopia, home to the grivet monkey (Chlorocebus aethiops), once consisted of large forested areas. This region has been severely denuded and now exhibits only small forest patches remaining at sites with special cultural significance in the immediate vicinity of churches. These forest patches, surrounded by agricultural crops, provide refugia habitat for the grivet monkey. We randomly surveyed 50 villagers living near the Batiero Church Forest, a 45-ha forest patch located in northern Ethiopia, to determine …
Rethinking Urban Green Infrastructure As A Means To Promote Avian Conservation, Allen Lau
Rethinking Urban Green Infrastructure As A Means To Promote Avian Conservation, Allen Lau
Master's Projects and Capstones
There is an under-recognized potential for cities to use urban green infrastructure to contribute to avian biodiversity conservation. At the global scale, climate change and growing urbanization are primary global drivers leading to decline and homogenization in world bird populations. Birds are fundamental and intricate species in ecosystems, and even in urban areas, act as indicator and regulator species contributing to healthy ecosystem function. While many cities have recognized the economic and social benefits associated with green spaces, such as the vast benefits ecosystem services provide to the urban dweller, the use of green spaces to concurrently contribute to avian …
Bee Communities On Managed Emergent Wetlands In The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley Of Arkansas, Phillip Lee Stephenson
Bee Communities On Managed Emergent Wetlands In The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley Of Arkansas, Phillip Lee Stephenson
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Native bee communities that use emergent wetlands are among the least studied systems in bee research. Most native bee species are thought to be in decline based on the loss of usable habitat across the United States. I surveyed emergent wetlands in the lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley of Arkansas during the summers of 2015 and 2016 using pan traps, blue-vane traps, and sweep nets to determine the current status of bee communities in this system. I surveyed 11 sites in 2015 and 17 sites in 2016 and found that bee communities were similar in actively versus passively managed emergent wetlands. …
Evaluating Habitat-Based Niche Requirements And Potential Recruitment Bottlenecks For Imperiled Bluehead Sucker (Catostomus Discobolus), Bryan C. Maloney
Evaluating Habitat-Based Niche Requirements And Potential Recruitment Bottlenecks For Imperiled Bluehead Sucker (Catostomus Discobolus), Bryan C. Maloney
All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023
Changes to rivers that alter physical and thermal habitat may cause fish population abundance to decline, due to fewer individuals maturing and entering the adult population. The Weber River has become highly degraded with many dams and diversions altering fish habitat, river volume, velocity, and temperature, and limiting movement between reaches. Bluehead suckers (Catostomus discobolus) occupy only 47% of their historical range and the genetically-distinct Weber River (northern UT) population is declining and contains few young, juvenile fish. My objectives were to determine whether spawning and rearing habitat available in the Weber River may be limiting bluehead sucker …
Body Shape Diversification Of Pecos Pupfish (Cyprinodon Pecosensis) On Varying Habitats As Evaluated By Geometric Morphometrics, Qianna Xu
Masters Theses & Specialist Projects
During the 19th and 20th centuries, alterations to the Pecos River in New Mexico and Texas, USA due to anthropogenic activities, including damning and river channelization, vast water extraction for irrigation, as well as pollution of associated habitats, have greatly impacted the fish fauna within the drainage. One of the endemic fish species, the Pecos pupfish (Cyprinodon pecosensis), might be the most affected. Historically abundant and widespread large populations have been disrupted and became a series of small isolated subpopulations that persist at a few highly fragmented habitats restricted to a small area in southern New Mexico. The connectivity among …
Lemurfaceid: A Face Recognition System To Facilitate Individual Identification Of Lemurs, David Crouse, Rachel L. Jacobs, Zach Richardson, Scott Klum, Anil Jain, Andrea L. Baden, Stacey R. Tecot
Lemurfaceid: A Face Recognition System To Facilitate Individual Identification Of Lemurs, David Crouse, Rachel L. Jacobs, Zach Richardson, Scott Klum, Anil Jain, Andrea L. Baden, Stacey R. Tecot
Publications and Research
Background: Long-term research of known individuals is critical for understanding the demographic and evolutionary processes that influence natural populations. Current methods for individual identification of many animals include capture and tagging techniques and/or researcher knowledge of natural variation in individual phenotypes. These methods can be costly, time-consuming, and may be impractical for larger-scale, populationlevel studies. Accordingly, for many animal lineages, long-term research projects are often limited to only a few taxa. Lemurs, a mammalian lineage endemic to Madagascar, are no exception. Long-term data needed to address evolutionary questions are lacking for many species. This is, at least in part, due …
The Conservation Status Of Marine Biodiversity Of The Pacific Islands Of Oceania, H. Pippard, G. M. Ralph, M. S. Harvey, K. E. Carpenter, J. R. Buchanan, D. W. Greenfield, H. D. Harwell, H. K. Larson, A. Lawrence, C. Linardich, K. Matsuura, H. Motomura, T. A. Munroe, R. F. Myers, B. C. Russell, W. F. Smith-Vaniz, J. C. Vié, R. R. Thaman, J. T. Williams
The Conservation Status Of Marine Biodiversity Of The Pacific Islands Of Oceania, H. Pippard, G. M. Ralph, M. S. Harvey, K. E. Carpenter, J. R. Buchanan, D. W. Greenfield, H. D. Harwell, H. K. Larson, A. Lawrence, C. Linardich, K. Matsuura, H. Motomura, T. A. Munroe, R. F. Myers, B. C. Russell, W. F. Smith-Vaniz, J. C. Vié, R. R. Thaman, J. T. Williams
Biological Sciences Faculty Publications
The Pacific Islands of Oceania are small islands and atolls occurring over a vast expanse of ocean that are characterized by immense biodiversity and endemism. This project represents a major expansion of the coverage of the Pacific Islands’ marine biodiversity on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The threats to Pacific Island marine biodiversity are many. Results from IUCN Red List initiatives such as this can guide decision-making and conservation prioritization of Pacific Island governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector. By shaping regional and national policies with these data in mind, priority sites for maintaining marine biodiversity …
Protected Areas As Social-Ecological Systems: Perspectives From Resilience And Social-Ecological Systems Theory, Graeme S. Cumming, Craig R. Allen
Protected Areas As Social-Ecological Systems: Perspectives From Resilience And Social-Ecological Systems Theory, Graeme S. Cumming, Craig R. Allen
Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications
Conservation biology and applied ecology increasingly recognize that natural resource management is both an outcome and a driver of social, economic, and ecological dynamics. Protected areas offer a fundamental approach to conserving ecosystems, but they are also social-ecological systems whose ecological management and sustainability are heavily influenced by people. This editorial, and the papers in the invited feature that it introduces, discuss three emerging themes in social-ecological systems approaches to understanding protected areas: (1) the resilience and sustainability of protected areas, including analyses of their internal dynamics, their effectiveness, and the resilience of the landscapes within which they occur; (2) …
A Descriptive Analysis Of Regal Fritillary (Speyeria Idalia) Habitat Utilizing Biological Monitoring Data Along The Big Bend Of The Platte River, Ne, Andrew J. Caven, Kelsey C. King, Joshua D. Wiese, Emma M. Brinley Buckley
A Descriptive Analysis Of Regal Fritillary (Speyeria Idalia) Habitat Utilizing Biological Monitoring Data Along The Big Bend Of The Platte River, Ne, Andrew J. Caven, Kelsey C. King, Joshua D. Wiese, Emma M. Brinley Buckley
Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications
Speyeria idalia populations have declined as much as 95 percent over the last three decades. Here we critically evaluate prairie habitat components along the Platte River in central Nebraska that S. idalia populations require in an effort to better inform conservation efforts. We utilized S. idalia count data from biological monitoring transects where vegetation, soils, land management, and flooding frequency data were also collected to describe the habitat constituents associated with S. idalia presence. We utilize comparative statistics, Pearson’s correlation analysis, and random forest analysis to model S. idalia habitat on land owned and managed by a small conservation NGO. …
The Potential Effects Of Future Climate Change On Suitable Habitat For The Taiwan Partridge (Arborophila Crudigularis): An Ensemble-Based Forecasting Method, Juncheng Lei, Jun Wu, Qingwei Guan
The Potential Effects Of Future Climate Change On Suitable Habitat For The Taiwan Partridge (Arborophila Crudigularis): An Ensemble-Based Forecasting Method, Juncheng Lei, Jun Wu, Qingwei Guan
Turkish Journal of Zoology
Climate change is considered to be one of the greatest threats to biodiversity in this century, especially for range-restricted island species. This study explored the potential effects of climate change on Arborophila crudigularis, a weak-flying endemic bird species in Taiwan. The potential effects of climate change on climatically suitable habitat for A. crudigularis were analyzed in biomod2 and ArcGIS software. Future climate change could increase the availability of climatically suitable habitat for A. crudigularis while decreasing the mean suitability for both the entire suitable area and the area with known presence records. By 2050 and 2080, climatically suitable habitat is …
Diet Selection Of Snow Leopard (Panthera Uncia) In Chitral, Pakistan, Rukhsana Khatoon, Iftikhar Hussain, Maqsood Anwar, Muhammad Ali Nawaz
Diet Selection Of Snow Leopard (Panthera Uncia) In Chitral, Pakistan, Rukhsana Khatoon, Iftikhar Hussain, Maqsood Anwar, Muhammad Ali Nawaz
Turkish Journal of Zoology
Snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is an elusive endangered carnivore found in remote mountain regions of Central Asia, with sparse distribution in northern Pakistan, including Chitral and Baltistan. The present study determined the food habits of snow leopard, including preferred prey species and seasonal variation in diet. Fifty-six scat samples were collected and analyzed to determine the diet composition in two different seasons, i.e. summer and winter. Hair characteristics such as cuticular scale patterns and medullary structure were used to identify the prey. This evidence was further substantiated from the remains of bones, claws, feathers, and other undigested remains found in …
Iron Metabolism Genes In Browsing And Grazing Rhinoceroses: Implications For Iron Overload Disorder, Lorien Salyer
Iron Metabolism Genes In Browsing And Grazing Rhinoceroses: Implications For Iron Overload Disorder, Lorien Salyer
Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects
Iron overload disorder is a serious condition that affects many animals of conservation interest, including rhinoceroses. Iron overload disorder is only found in browsing rhinos (African black, Diceros bicornis, and Sumatran, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) but not in grazing species (African white, Ceratotherium simum, and greater one-horned, Rhinoceros unicornis). Iron overload is connected with many of the other health issues seen in captive browsing rhinoceroses, so it is vitally important that the iron metabolism process is studied to improve the existing husbandry procedures of these critically endangered animals. The objective of this study was to characterize genes related to …