Animal Sciences Commons^™

Foraging Patterns And Population Density Of The Buff-Bellied Hummingbird (Amazilia Yucatanensis) In Hidalgo County, Tx, Megan I. Villarreal

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this investigation was to examine the foraging patterns and population density of the Buff-bellied Hummingbird (Amazilia yucatanensis ) in Hidalgo County, TX. Previous studies showed that hummingbirds use flowers displaying traditional bird pollination (ornithophilous) characteristics: reddish coloration, tubular corolla, and extended anthers. Observation sessions noted type and frequency of flowering species utilized for nectar, characteristics, and number of individuals seen in each area. Amazilia yucatanensis showed higher use of ornithophilous flowers. Significant results found: f-ratio 5.45 > p-value (0.05) 3.24. Two highly utilized species showed the expected 20–40% sucrose content expected in ornithophilous flowers. Population density per …

Reproductive Characteristics Of Landlocked Fall Chinook Salmon From Lake Oahe, South Dakota, Kelsen L. Young, Michael E. Barnes, Jeremy L. Kientz

The Prairie Naturalist

Lake Oahe, South Dakota, USA, landlocked fall Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) reproductive characteristics were examined over a 27 year period, from 1988 to 2015. Mean total lengths of spawning females ranged from 665 mm (1995) to 812 mm (2015) with considerable year-to-year variation. Post-spawn female weights varied, ranging from 2.02 kg (2000) to 5.55 kg (2015), with an overall mean of 3.04 kg. Fecundity peaked at 4,555 eggs per female in 2003, which was just 3 years after a low of 2,011 eggs per female in 2000. Relative fecundity based on female weight was greatest at 1,211 eggs/kg …

Effects Of Feeding Field Peas On Fresh Beef Quality, Hope Voegele

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The objective of this study was to evaluate the use of field peas during two phases of production (grazing and finishing) on fresh beef quality. A total of 232 crossbred steers and heifers were randomly assigned to one of six dietary treatments in a 3x2 factorial consisting of 3 pasture and 2 finishing supplementations. The pasture phase consisted of 1) no supplement, 2) field peas at 0.5% BW, or 3) dry-rolled corn supplement at 0.5% of BW. The finishing phase consisted of 1) field peas at 20% DM or 2) no field peas. During this two-year study, steers (year 1) …

Managing Corn Residue And Double Cropped Forages In Crop And Livestock Systems, Kristen M. Ulmer

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Integrating crop and livestock systems leads to opportunities to utilize land resources; however, crop producers focus on grain yields and ground cover, while livestock producers see opportunity to graze corn residue or annual forages. After wheat harvest or corn silage harvest, above ground forage production for brassica mixes and oats is greater than forage oats or oat production after high moisture corn harvest. Grazing steers on forage crops after grain harvest provides moderate gains. While annual forages provide good quality forages, corn residue grazing and utilization is still a cost-effective feedstuff for cattle producers. In the short term, grain yields …

Effects Of Feed Additives And Body Weight On Growth Performance And Carcass Characteristics Of Beef Finishing Cattle, Curtis J. Bittner

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

A pooled-analysis of feedlot pens examined the effects of steer age (calf-fed, short yearling, long yearling) and initial body weight on feedlot growth performance. Feed efficiency decreased linearly as initial body weight increased for all age groups of steers.

Three feedlot experiments evaluated the effects of NEXT ENHANCE (EO) and monensin/tylosin (MT) on growth performance and carcass characteristics in beef finishing diets. In Exp. 1, there were no MT x EO interactions for finishing performance and carcass characteristics. Feeding MT resulted in a 3.9% improvement in G:F compared to steers fed no MT. Feed efficiency was not different between steers …

Effects Of Field Pea Usage In Growing And Finishing Diets For Beef Cattle, Hannah L. Greenwell

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The value of field peas (FP) as a feedstuff has not been thoroughly assessed and compared to other feeds, such as corn, to better establish an economic value. Field peas are characterized by a high CP content (23-26%), a large portion (80%) being rumen degradable protein (RDP), and containing almost a third less starch (31-40%) than corn. Three research trials were performed to better understand the value of FP as a grazing supplement, finishing diet component, and any effects on digestion. Experiment 1 assessed the value of FP as a grazing supplement compared to corn. Grazing was followed by a …

The Application Of Chitosan On An Experimental Infection Of Pseudogymnoascus Destructans Increases Survival In Little Brown Bats, Torin C. Kulhanek

Masters Theses

This research builds upon a previous study conducted that tested the efficacy of chitosan on experimentally-infected bats as a laboratory model of White-nose syndrome. White-nose syndrome is a fungal infection caused by Pseudogymnoascus destructans, formerly known as Geomyces destructans. The pathology of this disease is not yet fully understood, but it is devastating bats throughout Northeastern America and continues to spread. Here we tested multiple application time points and concentrations of chitosan on the wings of experimentally-infected bats and compared them with the controls. We grossly viewed the wings first to get a sense of the amount of …

The Influence Of Diet And Oxidation On Calcium Retention Of The Mitochondria In Fresh Beef, Emery K. Wilkerson

Department of Animal Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Distillers grains (DG) contribute to cattle sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) membrane instability by increasing poly-unsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) content in the SR membrane, possibly resulting in early postmortem calcium (Ca) leakage and improved tenderness. Mitochondria are relatively easy to isolate intact and provide the opportunity to study Ca in an SR model. The objective of this research was to determine the influence of diet and oxidation on Ca release from mitochondria. Cattle (n = 48) were fed a corn-based finishing diet with or without deoiled, dried DG (50% DM basis). Steaks from each strip loin were aged for 2, 8, …

Migration Ecology Of American Woodcock (Scolopax Minor), Joseph Daniel Moore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Improving the understanding of American woodcock (Scolopax minor) migration ecology has been identified as a priority information need for woodcock management. Developments in remote tracking technology and analytical techniques present an opportunity to gain insight into woodcock migratory connectivity and migration phenology and to evaluate the degree in which the current two-region (Eastern and Central) basis for woodcock management represents migratory movements. To analyze woodcock migration using band return records, I excluded observations that took place during the migratory period. Using this dataset, 17.9% of records showed crossover between management regions, higher than the < 5% crossover found in studies including non-migratory band returns. During autumn migration, woodcock from the Central Region largely migrated to destinations within the Central Region, whereas woodcock from the Eastern Region migrated to destinations across their wintering range, mixing with individuals from the Central Region. Between 2013 and 2016, I deployed 75 satellite transmitters on woodcock. I tracked the migration paths of 61 woodcock and documented 88 woodcock migrations. Average migration duration was longer during spring migration (53 days) than during autumn migration (31 days) because woodcock made a higher number of close-together migratory stopovers, not because woodcock stayed at individual stopovers longer during spring migration. Woodcock captured in the Central Management Region used 2 primary migrations routes: a Western Route and a Central Route. The Western Route ran north-south, connecting the breeding and wintering grounds of the Central Management Region. The hourglass-shaped Central Route connected an area on the wintering grounds reaching from Texas to Florida, to sites throughout northeastern North America. Woodcock following the Central Route funneled between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi Alluvial Valley in western Tennessee during both autumn and spring migration. A higher than anticipated percentage (36%, n = 12) of marked woodcock captured in Texas and Louisiana and monitored during spring migration migrated to breeding-period sites in the Eastern Management Region, raising questions about the biological basis of managing woodcock as separate populations. The supplementary material includes woodcock capture information (Appendix I), information on individual stopovers (Appendix II), and migration maps for individual woodcock (Appendix III).

Oocyte Quality: Molecular Constituents Altered In The Oocyte Due To Various Environmental Factors, Lindsay Cox

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

An estimated 1.6 million American couples struggle with infertility. Some causes for poor fertility can be clearly defined but in many instances, subfertility is unexplained. Poor oocyte quality is now considered to be a main contributing factor for many causes of infertility. Good oocyte quality is crucial for many processes including embryo development and maintaining pregnancy. There is a possibility that any alterations to the oocyte can have long lasting effects on embryo development and the health of the offspring. The oocyte is very sensitive to any perturbations to its surrounding environment. Transcripts for apoptosis inhibitors and epigenetic modifiers were …

Effects Of Enhancement Solution Ph On Fresh And Cooked Color Of Dark-Cutting Beef, Ryan Stackhouse

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In two experiments, dark-cutting (DC) beef strip loins were used to test the effects of citric acid-enhancement pH on visual and instrumental color of fresh and cooked steaks. Dark cutting and normal pH strip loin were injected to 111% of raw product weight with pH 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, or 5.0 solutions by mixing citric acid in either 0.05% phosphate solution or tap water (Exp 1), or with pH 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, and 3.5 solutions made by mixing citric acid in either a 0.5% orthophosphate solution (PO4) or a 0.5% tripolyphosphate solution (STP) (Exp2). Loin sections were cut into 2.5-cm-thick steaks …

Relationship Among Genetic And Physiological Biomarkers, And Horse Characteristics, Casey Orr

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this study was to evaluate relationships among genetic and physiological biomarkers and phenotypic characteristics in horses. Three breeds (Quarter Horse, Thoroughbreds, Miniatures), and five genes of interest (leptin, ghrelin, cytochrome P450, glucocorticoid receptor, and lactate dehydrogenase) were the basis of the investigation. Genomic DNA was extracted from buffy coat samples of Quarter Horses (n = 21), Thoroughbreds (n = 26), and Miniatures (n = 34). Data were analyzed using MIXED MODEL procedures of SAS, with the main effects of breed and SNP genotype. Horse was the experimental unit, and dependent variables were classified as physical, cell differentials, …

Nuclear Factor [Erythroid-Derived 2]-Like 2’S (Nfe2l2) Gene Expression In Feed Efficiency And Oxidative Stress In Avian Muscle, Devin Wayne Cook

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oxidative stress may play a role in the phenotypic expression of feed efficiency (FE). The transcription factor NFE2L2 (nuclear factor erythroid-derived 2-like 2) coordinates antioxidant response to oxidative stress and its activity is tightly regulated in part by KEAP1 (Kelch like-ECH protein 1) and the E3 ligase CUL3 (Cullin3). Thus, one objective was to determine mRNA expression of NFE2L2, KEAP1, and CUL3 as well as three antioxidant targets [glutathione peroxidase (GPx-1), superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1), and superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2)] in breast muscle of immature pedigree broiler males (8 wk), immature Japanese quail males (4 wk) divergently selected for high …

Effect Of Delayed Wrapping And Wrapping Source On Intake And Digestibility Of Alfalfa Silage In Gestating Sheep, Valens Niyigena

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Baling silage with oxygen can result in dry matter deterioration and reduce silage intake by animals. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of two different wrapping sources and time intervals between baling and wrapping on intake and digestibility of alfalfa silage. The second objective was to assess the correlation of alfalfa silage fermentation parameters with intake and digestibility parameters in gestating sheep. Alfalfa silage was baled in large round bales then wrapped with plastic either with (KURA) or without (SUN) an oxygen-limiting barrier either the day of baling or 1, 2 or 3 d after baling. Beginning in …

Phenotypic Analysis And Localization Of Leukocytes At The Site Of Intradermal Injection Of Phytohemagglutinin In Chickens, Kallie Alyce Sullivan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Phytohemagglutinin (PHA) is commonly used to gain insight into an individual’s cellular immuno-competence. PHA is typically injected intradermally (i.d.) into the skin (e.g. wing web) and the tissue swelling response is then monitored, whereby the extent of the swelling positively relates to the individual’s cellular immune system capabilities. Although i.d. injected PHA was shown to stimulate mononuclear cell- and basophil-infiltration to the site of injection, reports on temporal, qualitative and quantitative aspects of the local PHA response are limited. The objective of this study was to use the growing feather (GF) as a cutaneous test-site to assess and monitor the …

Effects Of Acute Heat And Oxidative Stress On The Hepatic Expression Of Orexin And Its Related Receptors, Stephanie Khaldi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

It is widely known that orexin A and B peptides as well as their receptors are expressed in the hypothalamus and distributed throughout the central nervous system, but there have been few studies regarding its presences in other parts of the body. There is now evidence that orexin (ORX) and its receptors (ORXR1/2) are present in the avian liver; however, their regulation under different environmental conditions is still unknown. In the current study, we sought to determine the effects of heat and oxidative stress using hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) on the hepatic expression of ORX and ORXR1/2 in …

Leaf Miner's Leaves, Susan Hoenig

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

For many years I have been collecting leaves and discovered a phenomena that I find truly fascinating on specific leaves called "leaf miner's leaves". The leaves are the dwellings of animals, various insects' architectural habitat. Leaf miner's leaves are a phenomena in nature in the plant kingdom where the larvae of various insects tunnel their way through a leaf eating its living tissue. The leaf miners create distinctive patterns on each leaf. The snake-like serpentine tunnels protect them from predators and plant defenses.

Using Storytelling To Raise Interest In Vultures, Elise C. Osenga

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The tradition of oral storytelling is an art that stretches back to humankind's earliest cultures. While storytelling is often considered as a form of entertainment, it has also long been used as a teaching tool as well-- a way of engaging listeners to come to new understanding of their world through subtle means. It is my belief that stories, particularly stories with a clear tie to students' sense of place, can be more widely applied to effectively generate interest in specific scientific topics and help students to form emotional connections with the topics under discussion. The following personal narrative describes …

The Power Of Associative Learning And The Ontogeny Of Optimal Behaviour, Magnus Enquist, Johan Lind, Stefano Ghirlanda

Publications and Research

Behaving efficiently (optimally or near-optimally) is central to animals’ adaptation to their environment. Much evolutionary biology assumes, implicitly or explicitly, that optimal behavioural strategies are genetically inherited, yet the behaviour of many animals depends crucially on learning. The question of how learning contributes to optimal behaviour is largely open. Here we propose an associative learning model that can learn optimal behaviour in a wide variety of ecologically relevant circumstances. The model learns through chaining, a term introduced by Skinner to indicate learning of behaviour sequences by linking together shorter sequences or single behaviours. Our model formalizes the concept of conditioned …

Two New Species Of Euscorpius Thorell, 1876 From Southern Turkey (Scorpiones: Euscorpiidae), Gioele Tropea, Ersen Aydın Yağmur

Euscorpius

Two new species of scorpion of the genus Euscorpius Thorell, 1876 are described from southern Turkey based on morphological ratio and trichobothrial data. E. hakani sp. n. from Mt. Eşeler, in Denizli Province in southwestern Turkey and E. aladaglarensis sp. n. from the Aladağlar Mts., in Niğde, Kayseri, and Adana Provinces. With the description of two new taxa, 17 species of Euscorpius are currently recognized in Turkey.

Insect Consciousness: Commitments, Conflicts And Consequences, Colin Klein, Andrew B. Barron

Animal Sentience

Our target article, “Insects have the capacity for subjective experience,” has provoked a diverse range of commentaries. In this response we have collated what we see as the major themes of the discussion. It is clear that we differ from some commentators in our commitments to what subjective experience is and what the midbrain is capable of. Here we clarify where we stand on those points and how our view differs from some other influential perspectives. The commentaries have highlighted the most lively areas of disagreement. We revisit here the debates surrounding whether the cortex is essential for any form …

Gruber Explores The Living Lights Of The Oceans., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

The ocean waters are full of creatures that produce light, from microscopic organisms to sharks and marine turtles. Sometimes human vision is not prepared to detect it, but that does not mean such phenomena, known as bioluminescence and biofluorescence, are unimportant.

“There’s so many different ways in which life perceives light, and trying to get inside these animals, to get behind their eyes, is almost like walking in someone else’s shoes,” says Dr. David Gruber, an associate professor of biology at Baruch College in New York City. “It’s like being someone else for a day.”

Consciousness And Evolutionary Biology, Yew-Kwang Ng

Animal Sentience

Reber’s axiom: “Any organism with flexible cell walls, a sensitivity to its surrounds and the capacity for locomotion will possess the biological foundations of mind and consciousness” does not seem to be supported by things we know and the logic of evolutionary biology. The latter leads to the conclusion that conscious species are flexible in their behavior (rather than in their cell walls), as argued in Ng (1995, 2016). Locomotion may be completely hard-wired and need not involve consciousness. It is hard enough to explain how consciousness could emerge in a sophisticated brain: Isn’t it a harder problem to show …

Body Mass Estimates From Bone And Tooth Measurements In White-Tailed Deer, Odocoileus Virginianus, Brandi Morris, Alfred J. Mead

Georgia Journal of Science

The distal forelimbs and mandibles of 110 female and 240 male white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) from the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia, were used to examine the relationship between metacarpal dimensions, first lower molar occlusal surface area, and mandibular width versus body mass. The strongest correlation was found between female metacarpal proximal area vs. body mass (R2 = 0.74). The combined-sexes metacarpal proximal area vs. body mass displayed a lower correlation (R2 = 0.54). The female first lower molar surface area vs. body mass produced the highest dental correlation (R2 = 0.56). The study suggests that body mass estimates using …

Conditional Loss Of Pten In Myogenic Progenitors Leads To Postnatal Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy But Age-Dependent Exhaustion Of Satellite Cells, Feng Yue, Pengpeng Bi, Chao Wang, Jie Li, Xiaoqi Liu, Shihuan Kuang

Department of Animal Sciences Faculty Publications

Skeletal muscle stem cells (satellite cells [SCs]) are normally maintained in a quiescent (G0) state. Muscle injury not only activates SCs locally, but also alerts SCs in distant uninjured muscles via circulating fac- tors. The resulting GAlert SCs are adapted to regener- ative cues and regenerate injured muscles more effi- ciently, but whether they provide any long-term benefits to SCs is unknown. Here, we report that em- bryonic myogenic progenitors lacking the phospha- tase and tensin homolog (Pten) exhibit enhanced proliferation and differentiation, resulting in muscle hypertrophy but fewer SCs in adult muscles. Interest- ingly, Pten null SCs are predominantly …

The Difference Between Conscious And Unconscious Brain Circuits, Ezequiel Morsella, Zaviera Reyes

Animal Sentience

Theoretical frameworks in which consciousness is an inherent property of the neuron must account for the contrast between conscious and unconscious processes in the brain and address how neural events can ever be unconscious if consciousness is a property of all neurons. Other approaches have sought answers regarding consciousness by contrasting conscious and unconscious processes and through investigating the complex interactions between the two kinds of processes, as occurs most notably in human voluntary action. In voluntary action, consciousness is associated most, not with motor control or low-level perceptual processing, but with the stage of processing known as action selection.

Statistical Learning In Songbirds: From Self-Tutoring To Song Culture, Olga Fehér, Iva Ljubičić, Kenta Suzuki, Kazuo Okanoya, Ofer Tchernichovski

Publications and Research

At the onset of vocal development, both songbirds and humans produce variable vocal babbling with broadly distributed acoustic features. Over development, these vocalizations differentiate into the well-defined, categorical signals that characterize adult vocal behaviour. A broadly distributed signal is ideal for vocal exploration, that is, for matching vocal production to the statistics of the sensory input. The developmental transition to categorical signals is a gradual process during which the vocal output becomes differentiated and stable. But does it require categorical input?We trained juvenile zebra finches with playbacks of their own developing song, produced just a few moments earlier, updated continuously …

Resolving The Hard Problem And Calling For A Small Miracle, Arthur S. Reber

Animal Sentience

With the exception of the commentary by Key, the commentaries on Reber have a common feature: the commenters feel, with varying levels of enthusiasm, that there is at least some virtue in the core assumption of the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory that consciousness (or subjectivity or sentience) accompanies the earliest forms of life. The model has two important entailments: (a) it resolves the (in)famous Hard Problem by redirecting the search for the biochemical foundations of sentience away from human consciousness; and (b) it reduces the need for an emergentist miracle to a far simpler scale than is currently …

No Help On The Hard Problem, Derek Ball

Animal Sentience

The hard problem of consciousness is to explain why certain physical states are conscious: why do they feel the way they do, rather than some other way or no way at all? Arthur Reber (2016) claims to solve the hard problem. But he does not: even if we grant that amoebae are conscious, we can ask why such organisms feel the way they do, and Reber’s theory provides no answer. Still, Reber’s theory may be methodologically useful: we do not yet have a satisfactory theory of consciousness, but perhaps the study of simple minds is a way to go about …

Unconscious Higher-Order Thoughts (Hots) As Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness?, Rocco J. Gennaro

Animal Sentience

Rowlands argues that many nonhuman animals are “persons,” contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy which rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. He argues that self-awareness bifurcates into two importantly different forms — reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-awareness — and that many animals can have the latter, which is sufficient for personhood. I agree that there is good reason to think that many animals can have pre-reflective self-awareness, but I think Rowlands is mistaken about its nature. His account runs the risk of leading to an infinite regress objection, and his notion of pre-reflective self-awareness …