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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Genetic Sequencing For Measuring Biodiversity In Recent And Ancient Marine Sediments, Lauren Judge May 2019

Genetic Sequencing For Measuring Biodiversity In Recent And Ancient Marine Sediments, Lauren Judge

Celebration of Learning

Taxonomic biodiversity, measured by counting the number of species present in a given area, is the most common method of capturing ecosystem biodiversity in recent and ancient environments. While this method is widely accepted, it is limited by poor preservation and identification of many individuals, making it impossible to include every species within an ecosystem and resulting in the loss of some diversity information. To address this issue, we measured the genetic biodiversity (in which species are determined based on sequencing of their DNA) of shallow marine ecosystems by extracting and sequencing the 18S ribosomal gene from bulk carbonate sediment …


Advancing Natural History Research Using The Collections Of The Owu Brant Museum Of Zoology, Josh Pletcher, Kyle Davis Apr 2019

Advancing Natural History Research Using The Collections Of The Owu Brant Museum Of Zoology, Josh Pletcher, Kyle Davis

Student Symposium

Natural history collections are important repositories of biological and geological material. Biological collections provide raw data to interpret the ecology, anatomy, and evolution of living and fossil organisms. OWU’s zoological collections play an important role in undergraduate research and educating future preparators. Two projects are currently in progress: Kyle Davis’ work on size variation in house sparrows and Josh Pletcher’s work digitizing OWU’s collection of Ward’s fossil casts. We travelled to museums in New York and Connecticut to further pursue our research. Kyle Davis’ research focuses on Bergmann’s Rule, which states that as temperature decreases, body size increases, decreasing surface …