Animal Sciences Commons^™

Stable Isotope Analyses Of Bat Fur: Applications For Investigating North American Bat Migration, Erin E. Fraser

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Many aspects of North American bat migration are not well documented. Stable isotope analyses of animal tissues can elucidate migratory origin, but this technique has not been widely applied to bats. This dissertation i) uses fur stable isotope analyses to investigate North American bat migration and ii) highlights some of the strengths and weaknesses of this analytical technique when applied to bat systems. I conducted stable hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen isotope analyses on fur from five bat species.

I documented δD_fur heterogeneity in summer resident populations of Myotis lucifugus, Lasiurus borealis, Lasiurus cinereus, and Lasionycteris noctivagans. Stable …

Patterns Of Transience, Sex Bias, And Body Mass In Open-Habitat Rodent Populations, Stephen Edward Rice

Biological Sciences Theses & Dissertations

Rodents are assumed to live their lives in circumscribed (natal) areas with males being more prone to disperse than females and juveniles more prone to disperse than adults. To test these assumptions we examined the initial captures of geographic populations of hispid cotton rat, meadow vole, prairie vole, and marsh rice rat obtained through capture-mark-recapture methods. Capture records were obtained from Kansas and Illinois from long-term studies, and through live-trapping in Chesapeake, Virginia. I evaluated proportions of residents and transients, adults and juveniles, and males and females for significant differences among seasons, years, and geographic locations. The overall body masses …