Biodiversity Commons^™

Using Edna To Assess Impacts Of Oyster Restoration On Ecosystem Biodiversity At A Heavily Impacted Coastal Lagoon, Dominique Di Domenico, Emily Bonacchi, Elizabeth Suter

Molloy Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference

The Great South Bay (GSB), a bar-built, temperate, coastal lagoon on the south shore of Long Island, New York, USA, is a highly modified estuary due to heavy urbanization and suburbanization in the last century. GSB historically provided up to 50% of the nation’s hard clam (Mercenaria mercenaria) harvest, and is the legal home of the “Blue Point” oyster (eastern oyster; Crassostrea virginica). However, due to overexploitation as well as persistent stress from ongoing nitrogen pollution and harmful algal blooms, shellfish populations are fractions of their original abundances. Restoration efforts in GSB, driven both by community efforts …

Drone Imagery Of Submarine Groundwater Discharge Effects On Coastal Primary Productivity On Coral Reefs In Maunalua Bay, Hawai'i, Lulu Wang, Florybeth Flores La Valle, Grace Kim

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) plays a crucial role in coastal ecosystems, especially coral reefs, by introducing terrestrial nutrients and freshwater, significantly affecting the primary productivity of coastal ecosystems and potentially altering ecological balances. La Valle et al. (2023) emphasized the importance of SGD in nutrient distribution and algal productivity, highlighting the need for comprehensive understanding and management strategies in the face of increasing nutrient runoff due to land use changes due to increased population. To better understand the impact, our experiments utilize remote sensing and data science by using a DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise drone with a thermal imaging camera …

Effectiveness Of Frog Skin Secretions Against Uv-B Radiation, Connor Mcgaha, Kinkade Mcmurray, Lee B. Kats

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

As an increasing number of their species face possible extinction, amphibian populations have been steadily declining over the past decades (IUCN). While various factors have been suggested or proven to be partially responsible for this reduction, increased ultraviolet B radiation (UVBR) appears to be one of the more prominent explanations, especially when considering the continual thinning of the Earth’s ozone layer due to anthropogenic climate change. However, it has also been discovered that skin secretions, which are reported to function as a component of amphibians’ innate immune systems, may have an effect on UVBR (Cramp and Franklin). With this in …

Quantifying The Role Of Water Quality On Nitrogen Cycling In A Trophic Estuary, Kayla Gonzalez-Boy

Symposium of Student Scholars

Jobos Bay Estuary is an intertidal, tropical estuary located in southern Puerto Rico. The estuary covers about 12 km² and has a variety of habitats, such as seagrass beds, mangroves, mud flats, and coral reefs, which play important roles in sediment trapping and water quality maintenance. Seagrasses also serve as nursery and feeding grounds and provide shelter for macrofauna. Currently, the role of seagrasses and water quality on nitrogen (N) cycling in trophic estuaries is not well constrained. Understanding variations in sediment-based effects on N cycling rates and transformations, and how they are associated with water quality, is an …

Zebrafish Feeding And Breeding: Adapting Best Practices For Zebrafish Husbandry, Abbigale Sullins

Scholars Day Conference

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are a tropical, freshwater fish that serve as a key research model for human health and disease. The anatomical and genetic similarities shared by humans and zebrafish make establishing a zebrafish laboratory advantageous for undergraduate research and coursework. Zebrafish feeding protocols utilize two primary food types: dry (flake or pelleted) food and live prey such as artemia (brine shrimp) or rotifers. Adopting a feeding protocol that incorporates both dry and live feed optimizes considerations of nutrition and cost for maintaining healthy fish. Best practices for feeding were adapted from authoritative sources in the current literature and published …

Digging Into Sustainable Agriculture, Gabrielle I. Tanner

Ideas: Exhibit Catalog for the Honors College Visiting Scholars Series

Between climate change and increasing global populations, humanity has reached a critical moment for agriculture. The push to produce more food has resulted in declining ecosystems and a diminishing crop biodiversity. Experts propose shifting towards sustainability to protect and augment natural ecosystem services, upon which agriculture depends. Widespread implementation of practices such as cover cropping and green manures have the potential to reduce waterway pollution and climate change while preserving the biodiversity that allows agroecosystems to be resilient against threats like pests. Ultimately, an agricultural revolution such as this is necessary in the effort to feed humanity in the future.

Microbial Diversity And Community Structure In Sediments Associated With The Seagrass (Thallassia Testudinum) In Apalachicola Bay, Florida, Rahma Ahmed, Thomas Mcelroy, Troy Mutchler

Symposium of Student Scholars

Seagrass is an angiosperm which provides many ecosystem services in coastal areas, such as providing food, shelter and nurseries for many species, and decreasing the impact of waves on shorelines. A global assessment reported that 29% of known seagrass meadows are in a state of decline due to the effects of human activity. Seagrass is commonly found in shallow marine waters where they form meadows containing a microbiome that plays an important role in providing nutrients for seagrass growth, though little is known about the microorganisms within the seagrass meadow sediments. Our project collected sediments from seagrass meadows and adjacent …

Initial Assessment Of Potential Relationships Between Plant Communities And The Soil Microbiome In Closed Forest And Longleaf Pine Restoration Sites., Sean Davis, Ian Kennedy

Symposium of Student Scholars

Longleaf pine is an endangered ecosystem characterized by high levels of biodiversity.

Our study took place in the Sheffield Wildlife Management Area located in the Piedmont ecoregion of Georgia in Paulding County. Fifty plots of 10 x 30 m² were setup on south or north facing slopes, some in covered forest, and some in an area actively being restored for the longleaf pine. All trees above 1.37 m were identified and had their diameter measured, and species diversity, relative density, dominance, and frequency were determined. Herbaceous plant cover percentages were recorded in select plots. Soil samples were also collected …

Towards The Identification Of The Soil Fungal Microbiome Community Associated With Longleaf Pine, Joshua Inneh, Grace Krueger, Ian Thomasson, Fletcher Moon, Geoffrey Eger

Symposium of Student Scholars

This project is part of a larger study looking at the restoration of the Longleaf Pine (LLP) ecosystem in certain Wildlife Management Areas (WMA) in Northwest Georgia. Our long-term aim is to look for potential associations between the aboveground and belowground community structures as the complex system of feedback mechanisms between the soil microbiome, the rhizosphere, and the plant communities is not yet understood.

Soil samples were collected from a total of six plots in the Sheffield WMA located in Paulding County. The samples were collected from north or south facing hillside plots except for in the savanna sites (an …

A Reevaluation Of The Phylogeography Of The Chattahoochee Slimy Salamander (Plethodon Chattahoochee) Using Next-Generation Genomic Data, Jadin Cross

Symposium of Student Scholars

The Plethodon glutinosus species complex is a group of large-bodied, lungless salamanders that are widespread across the eastern United States. Species in this group are morphologically cryptic and were originally delimited using allozyme data, but in most cases, the extent of contemporary gene flow between named taxa has not be rigorously evaluated. The Appalachian Mountains of northern Georgia are home to several members of this group—including P. glutinosus, P. teyahalee, P. chlorobryonis, and P. chattahoochee. P. chattahoochee has been found to be especially cryptic both morphologically and genetically as both intraspecific genetic variation and species boundaries within …

Decline In Amphibian Health In Local Stream, Elyse Vetter, Elise Dearment, Colton Russell, Audrey Fontes, Lee Kats

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Many local streams of the Santa Monica Mountains are populated by the native California Newt, Taricha torosa, a species of special concern. Arroyo Sequit is one of these streams, the upper and lower portions of which are split by a culvert and the Mulholland Highway. This stream and the surrounding areas burned during the Woolsey fire of 2018. Since the fire, construction has been ongoing in and around the stream. Two years post-fire (during the summer of 2020) significantly more newts were found in the stream than years prior. A large proportion of these newts were unhealthy in appearance, …

Conspecific Aggression Of Invasive Crayfish, P. Clarkii, In Response To Chemical Cues, Elyse Vetter, Elise Dearment, Audrey Fontes, Gary Bucciarelli, Lee Kats

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Red Swamp Crayfish, Procambarus clarkii, have caused vast damage to the stream ecosystem of the Santa Monica Mountains, following their invasive introduction. Through their extensive eating habits, high levels of aggression, and responsiveness to environmental stimuli, P. clarkii have a tremendous impact on the success of native species in the Santa Monica Mountains. With exposure to chemical cues, crayfish are able to perceive threats and react accordingly. To determine the extent of such chemoreception, pairs of P. clarkii were tested in the laboratory for conspecific aggression in the presence of native newt, native frog, and conspecific alarm cues. The …

The Effects Of Symbiote Ostracods On Invasive Crayfish Behavior, Audrey Fontes, Elyse Vetter, Gary Bucciarelli, Lee Kats

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Invasive crayfish, Procambarus clarkii, are known to negatively impact the biodiversity of Santa Monica Mountain streams. Small symbiotes, ostracods, live on Procambarus clarkii in some local streams. However, their effect on the behaviour of invasive crayfish is unknown. We used an aqueous chlorobutanol solution to remove ostracods from crayfish. We paired control crayfish with those that had ostracods removed and scored aggressive interactions. Crayfish without ostracods were found to be significantly more aggressive towards crayfish with ostracods. When we compared feeding behavior, we found that crayfish without ostracods consumed food more quickly than control crayfish. We again subjected crayfish …

Using Modeling To Investigate Factors Driving Avian Diversity In Urban Ecosystems, Clay Bliznick

Scholars Week

Anthropogenic influences have altered global landscapes considerably throughout the past two centuries, resulting in the decline of natural land cover types. Conversely, land cover types such as cropland and urban areas that are derived from human activities have experienced vast expansion. This landscape transition has serious implications for ecosystem services. To mitigate the loss of these services, it is necessary to maintain ecological integrity within these anthropogenically-influenced systems. Being able to support high biodiversity is an indicator of well-functioning ecosystems, thus quantifying biodiversity and assessing its contributing factors can be useful for developing management strategies in artificial environments. Our objective …

135— Coral-Sponge Interactions On Rocky Point Reef, San Salvador, Bahamas, Michael Harvey, Anna Meichenbaum, Brooke Stickles

GREAT Day Posters

We surveyed the intensity of competition for reef space between sponges and corals at the Rocky Point patch reef adjacent to San Salvador Island, The Bahamas. Our working hypothesis was that, because of a dearth of predators, fast growing, chemically unprotected sponges more likely to be involved in competitive interactions. Results indicate that competition for reef space was widespread, but contrary to our hypothesis no sponge or coral species was disproportionately more involved in these interactions. These results contradict previous studies on Rocky Point reef and in our discussion we propose an explanation for this discrepancy.

Secrets Of A Rare Bird: Breeding Behavior Of The Gray-Breasted Flycatcher (Lathrotriccus Griseipectus) In Ecuador, William Harris Kirkpatrick

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

The Tumbesian region of southwestern Ecuador and northwestern Peru is home to a large number of endemic bird species. Many of these species are threatened with extinction, and little is known about their basic biology. Thus, information regarding natural history of species in the region is needed to guide conservation management. We studied the reproductive biology of the Gray-breasted Flycatcher, Lathrotriccus griseipectus, a small Tyrannid that lives in the Tumbesian region. Due to habitat destruction, the range size of L. griseipectus has dwindled and the species is now listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. We used a mounted …

Can Omnivores Mediate The Effects Of Degradation?, Hannah Moore

Scholars Week

Omnivores feed at multiple trophic levels and have large effects on community structuring and stability. The magnitude and direction of such effects, whether omnivores stabilize or destabilize communities, remains unresolved. Shifts in omnivore diet and trophic position may be of particular importance to community stability in degraded habitats, where resources are sparse. For example, omnivores may reduce the severity and duration of community responses to degradationby dampening the effects of any disturbance-mediated trophic cascade. The relatively simple food webs of freshwater systems are ideal for studying trophic ecology, and in the western U.S., streams are heavily degraded by overgrazing, beaver …

P-46 A Periodic Matrix Model Of Seabird Behavior And Population Dynamics, Mykhaylo M. Malakhov, Benjamin Macdonald, Shandelle M. Henson, J. M. Cushing

Honors Scholars & Undergraduate Research Poster Symposium Programs

Rising sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Pacific Northwest lead to food resource reductions for surface-feeding seabirds, and have been correlated with several marked behavioral changes. Namely, higher SSTs are associated with increased egg cannibalism and egg-laying synchrony in the colony. We study the long-term effects of climate change on population dynamics and survival by considering a simplified, cross-season model that incorporates both of these behaviors in addition to density-dependent and environmental effects. We show that cannibalism can lead to backward bifurcations and strong Allee effects, allowing the population to survive at lower resource levels than would be possible otherwise.

Sand Trends And Habitat Degradation, Jerrod Parker, Drew Costenbader, Yong Cao, John Epifanio

Kankakee River Watershed Conference

Scholarship domains: Discovery, Teaching and Learning

Author keywords: Sand Movement, Fish Diversity, Kankakee River, Sportfish, Side-scan sonar