Animal Sciences Commons^™

The Effects Of Sulfuric Acid Deposition On The Growth And Development Of Pond Breeding Salamanders In The Genus Ambystoma, Kenneth J. Anderson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In terrestrial habitats with a history of mining activity and previous or ongoing reclamation efforts, understanding the effects of acidification on the ecology of amphibians is an important part of the restoration process and the conservation of local amphibian populations. Pond-breeding amphibians spend much of their post metamorphic life history in direct contact with the soil in upland habitat adjacent to aquatic breeding sites. I reared recently metamorphosed marbled salamanders (Ambystoma opacum) to evaluate the role of soil acidity on determinants of fitness such as growth and survival. My results indicate that a substrate of pH 4 was lethal to …

Global Phylogeny Of The Water Penny Beetles Using Both Molecular And Morphological Evidence (Co, Mathew Vincent Wood

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The Psephenidae is a family of freshwater beetles usually found in swift streams worldwide. Their unique disc shaped and flattened larvae have made this a group of interest for scientists for centuries. Morphologically, this family has been relatively well researched, and systematically the family is fairly well known and supported as monophyletic. One issue with Psephenidae, and with many other insect groups, is the lack of the molecular phylogenetic analyses to test morphology hypothesizes.

After successfully sequencing these two genes from species representing nearly all of the known genera, the data were analyzed using both Bayesian and parsimony methods. Analyses …