Biology Commons^™

Shorter Migration Distances Associated With Higher Winter Temperatures Suggest A Mechanism For Advancing Nesting Phenology Of American Kestrels Falco Sparverius, Julie A. Heath, Karen Steenhof, Mark A. Foster

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Global climate change has affected avian migration patterns and nesting phenology. Changes in one phase of a bird's cycle will most likely affect other stages, but few studies focus simultaneously on multiple life-history events. We used western North American ringing records and Christmas Bird Counts to examine whether changes in migration patterns were concordant with advancing American kestrel Falco sparverius nesting phenology. Consistent with previous findings, male kestrels migrated shorter distances than female kestrels, and kestrels nesting in southern latitudes migrated shorter distances than kestrels nesting in more northern areas. In addition, kestrel migration distance decreased significantly from 1960 to …

The Effect Of Climate Change On The Distributions Of Invasive Plants And Their Associated Biological Control Agents In North America, Caroline A. Curtis

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Climate change has the potential to alter the size, shape, and location of species’ distributions. As a result, the interactions between species are also likely to be impacted as novel species encounter each other and historical community assemblages are broken apart. To quantify the impact of distributional changes as a result of climate change on interacting species, distribution maps were produced for three species of invasive plant and their associated biological control agent at three time periods: current, 2050, and 2080. For each of the future time periods, two distribution maps were created for each species, representing the minimum and …

A Functional Trait Perspective On Plant Invasion, Rebecca E. Drenovsky, Brenda J. Grewell, Carla M. D'Antonio

Biology

Global environmental change will affect non-native plant invasions, with profound potential impacts on native plant populations, communities and ecosystems. In this context, we review plant functional traits, particularly those that drive invader abundance (invasiveness) and impacts, as well as the integration of these traitsacross multiple ecological scales, and as a basis for restoration and management.
We review the concepts and terminology surrounding functional traits and how functional traits influence processes at the individual level. We explore how phenotypic plasticity may lead to rapid evolution of novel traits facilitating invasiveness in changing environments and then oscale up' to evaluate the relative …

Adaptive Tolerance To Ocean Acidification In The Marine Sponge: Chondrilla Nucula, Sylvester Lee

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dramatic increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution has led to a 30% increase in ocean acidification over pre-industrial levels. Although most ocean acidification research thus far has focused on calcifying organisms such as corals, the potential of this increase in acidity (H+ ions) to cause acid-base imbalances in soft-bodied animals such as sponges has been grossly overlooked. Furthermore, many studies on ocean acidification have not considered the elevated temperatures that are predicted to accompany future climate change conditions. Sponges are crucial components to coral reef systems, providing food, nutrients, structure, and support. The sponge Chondrilla nucula …

Biophysics, Environmental Stochasticity, And The Evolution Of Thermal Safety Margins In Intertidal Limpets, W. Wesley Dowd, M. W. Denny

Biology Faculty Works

As the air temperature of the Earth rises, ecological relationships within a community might shift, in part due to differences in the thermal physiology of species. Prediction of these shifts – an urgent task for ecologists – will be complicated if thermal tolerance itself can rapidly evolve. Here, we employ a mechanistic approach to predict the potential for rapid evolution of thermal tolerance in the intertidal limpet Lottia gigantea. Using biophysical principles to predict body temperature as a function of the state of the environment, and an environmental bootstrap procedure to predict how the environment fluctuates through time, we create …

Exploring The Effects Of Hypoxia On Sulfate Reducing Anaerobes, Annaliese K. Jones

Senior Honors Projects

Exploring the Effects of Hypoxia on Sulfate Reducing Anaerobes

Annaliese K. Jones

Sponsor: Bethany Jenkins, Cell and Molecular Biology

As a student about to graduate with a degree in Biological Sciences, I find myself faced with the need to find my own independent research interests and scientific voice. As a result of my interests in the fields of both microbiology and ecology, I am drawn to questions surrounding the role and behavior of microorganisms in the environment. With climate change being an issue capturing the attention of a large portion of the scientific community, I have chosen to focus my …

Going All The Way: Phylogeography And Trans-Pacific Divergence Genetics Of Nucella Lima, Lisa Cox

All Theses

Fluctuating climate over the last 2 million years (MY) has repeatedly caused latitudinal shifts in species distributions, fueling the hypothesis that the glacial-interglacial dynamics of the Pleistocene could have driven regional genetic differentiation and potentially speciation. For species whose distributions spanned the entire North Pacific, regional extinction of northern populations during cooler glacial periods may have resulted in isolation and genetic differentiation of eastern and western populations. To test this hypothesis, I gathered genetic data from a rocky shore intertidal gastropod, Nucella lima, whose current (i.e. warm interglacial) distribution spans the entire North Pacific. Mitochondrial DNA sequences are genetically structured …

Mammalian Diversification Across The Holarctic: Spatiotemporal Evolution In Response To Environmental Change, Andrew G. Hope

Biology ETDs

The primary focus in this dissertation is on the processes of environmental change that drive evolution. We are currently witnessing unparalleled changes in climate and associated changes in biotic communities. With a growing understanding that climate and habitat change, coupled with natural variability, will have an increased influence on biota into the future, it is our responsibility to learn how best to manage and conserve the Earths natural resources. Among other things, this will require a firmer understanding of biodiversity, life histories, evolutionary relationships among species, and community dynamics over multiple species. One method of understanding how species will respond …

Causes And Consequences Of Changes In Algal Community Structure Of Arctic Tundra Ponds From Barrow, Alaska, Mariana Vargas Medrano

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Algal communities in the Arctic are highly sensitive to environmental change, such as longer growing seasons and changes in ice cover. On the north slope of Alaska, ponds and lakes cover large portions of the total land area. We surveyed the periphytic algal communities in tundra ponds from Barrow, Alaska to assess environmental effects on their populations. Samples were collected in August 2008-10 from two main study areas: the IBP (the International Biological Program), which was also studied in 1970-71 but now is located near to human settlements, and the BEO (Barrow Environmental Observatory), which is within a protected area. …

Flowering Phenology Change And Climate Warming In Southwestern Ohio, Ryan Mcewan, Robert J. Brecha, Donald R. Geiger, Grace P. John

Biology Faculty Publications

Global surface temperature has increased markedly over the last 100 years. This increase has a variety of implications for human societies, and for ecological systems. One of the most obvious ways ecosystems are affected by global climate change is through alteration of organisms’ developmental timing (phenology). We used annual botanical surveys that documented the first flowering for an array of species from 1976 to 2003 to examine the potential implications of climate change for plant development. The overall trend for these species was a progressively earlier flowering time. The two earliest flowering taxa (Galanthus and Crocus) also exhibited the strongest …

Biological Reserves Under Climate Change; A Case Study In Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest, Maria Amin

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Sensitivity And Exposure Of Brook Trout (Salvelinus Fontinalis) Habitat To Climate Change, Bradly Allen Trumbo

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Predicting coldwater fisheries distributions under various climate scenarios is of interest to many fisheries managers and researchers. Larger scale models have been useful in highlighting the potential large scale threat. However, the error associated with these models makes predictions of the persistence of individual cold water fisheries problematic. Most of this error is associated with predicted air and water temperatures which typically are simple elevation and location (latitude/longitude) models with simple caveats such as 1°C increase in air temperature equals 0.8°C increase in water temperatures. I directly measured paired air and water temperatures in watersheds containing reproducing populations of brook …

Recent Advances In The Climate Change Biology Literature: Describing The Whole Elephant, A. Townsend Peterson, Shaily Menon, Xingong Li

Peer Reviewed Publications

Climate change biology is seeing a wave of new contributions, which are reviewed herein. Contributions treat shifts in phenology and distribution, and both document past and forecast future effects. However, many of the current wave of contributions are observational and correlational, and few are experimental in nature, and too often a conceptual framework in which to contextualize the results is lacking. An additional gap is the lack of effective cross-linking among areas of research, for example, connection of sea-level rise and climate change implications for distributions of species, or evolutionary adaptation studies with distributional shift studies. Although numerous important contributions …

Climate Change: Implications For Montane Mammals Of The Great Basin, Georgina Yvette Jacquez

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Climate change threatens biodiversity; in particular, species with narrow distributions and specific habitat requirements. The Great Basin provides an excellent model system to evaluate the effects of climate change on species with isolated distributions and specific habitat requirements. I have evaluated the McDonald and Brown (1992) model that examined the effects of climate change on montane mammals of the Great Basin based on its underlying assumptions and model predictions. I have modeled the distributions of twelve montane mammal species found in the Great Basin and identified potential local extinctions by using maximum entropy modeling (Maxent) for two emission scenarios of …

Organismal Climatology: Analyzing Environmental Variability At Scales Relevant To Physiological Stress, Brian Helmuth, Bernardo R. Broitman, Lauren Yamane, Sarah E. Gilman, Katharine Mach, K. A.S. Mislan, Mark W. Denny

Faculty Publications

Predicting when, where and with what magnitude climate change is likely to affect the fitness, abundance and distribution of organisms and the functioning of ecosystems has emerged as a high priority for scientists and resource managers. However, even in cases where we have detailed knowledge of current species’ range boundaries, we often do not understand what, if any, aspects of weather and climate act to set these limits. This shortcoming significantly curtails our capacity to predict potential future range shifts in response to climate change, especially since the factors that set range boundaries under those novel conditions may be different …

Latitudinal Variation In Seasonal Activity And Mortality In Ratsnakes (Elaphe Obsoleta), Jinelle H. Sperry, Gabriel Blouin-Demers, Gerardo L.F. Carfagno, Patrick J. Weatherhead

Biology Faculty Publications

The ecology of ectotherms should be particularly affected by latitude because so much of their biology is temperature dependent. Current latitudinal patterns should also be informative about how ectotherms will have to modify their behavior in response to climate change. We used data from a total of 175 adult black ratsnakes (Elaphe obsoleta) radio tracked in Ontario, Illinois, and Texas, a latitudinal distance of > 1500 km, to test predictions about how seasonal patterns of activity and mortality should vary with latitude. Despite pronounced differences in temperatures among study locations, and despite ratsnakes in Texas not hibernating and switching from diurnal …

Direct And Indirect Effects Of Climate Change On Amphibian Populations, Andrew R. Blaustein, Susan C. Walls, Betsy A. Bancroft, Joshua J. Lawler, Catherine L. Searle, Stephanie S. Gervasi

Biology Faculty Scholarship

As part of an overall decline in biodiversity, populations of many organisms are declining and species are being lost at unprecedented rates around the world. This includes many populations and species of amphibians. Although numerous factors are affecting amphibian populations, we show potential direct and indirect effects of climate change on amphibians at the individual, population and community level. Shifts in amphibian ranges are predicted. Changes in climate may affect survival, growth, reproduction and dispersal capabilities. Moreover, climate change can alter amphibian habitats including vegetation, soil, and hydrology. Climate change can influence food availability, predator-prey relationships and competitive interactions which …

Locomotion In Response To Shifting Climate Zones: Not So Fast, Martin E. Feder, Theodore Garland Jr., James H. Marden, Anthony J. Zera

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Although a species’ locomotor capacity is suggestive of its ability to escape global climate change, such a suggestion is not necessarily straightforward. Species vary substantially in locomotor capacity, both ontogenetically and within/among populations, and much of this variation has a genetic basis. Accordingly, locomotor capacity can and does evolve rapidly, as selection experiments demonstrate. Importantly, even though this evolution of locomotor capacity may be rapid enough to escape changing climate, genetic correlations among traits (often due to pleiotropy) are such that successful or rapid dispersers are often limited in colonization or reproductive ability, which may be viewed as a trade-off. …

Linking Wildlife Populations With Ecosystem Change: State-Of-The-Art Satellite Ecology For National-Park Science, Mark Hebblewhite

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

As human impacts increase in national parks and the greater ecosystems surrounding them, the National Park Service faces the difficulty of monitoring ecosystem changes and responses of key wildlife indicator species within parks. Responses of bison to trail grooming in Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho) and control of the animals once they leave the park (Bruggeman et al. 2007), migration of wildlife across park boundaries (Griffith et al. 2002; Berger 2004), effects of restored wolves on vegetation communities through trophic cascades (Hebblewhite et al. 2005), and responses of wildlife to the use of prescribed fires all represent problems …

Differential Response Of Amp Activated Protein Kinase (Ampk) And Hsp70 To Temperature Stress In The Gastropod, Nucella Lapillus, Emily Zimmermann

All Theses And Dissertations

Populations of the gastropod Nucella lapillus are polymorphic for shell color, with light-colored shells predominating on warmer, wave-protected shores and dark-colored shells limited primarily to cooler, wave-exposed shores. During thermal stress, darker shells attain higher body temperatures than lighter shells. These results suggest that heat stress may determine field distribution patterns. However, there is currently little evidence of physiological consequences of thermal stress in these organisms. Following the guiding hypothesis that heat stress leads to cellular energy depletion, we explored whether the central energy regulator AMP-activated Protein Kinase (AMPK) is activated by heat stress. We compared this response in both …

From Cells To Coastlines: How Can We Use Physiology To Forecast The Impacts Of Climate Change?, Brian Helmuth

Faculty Publications

The interdisciplinary fields of conservation physiology, macrophysiology, and mechanistic ecological forecasting have recently emerged as means of integrating detailed physiological responses to the broader questions of ecological and evolutionary responses to global climate change. Bridging the gap between large-scale records of weather and climate (as measured by remote sensing platforms, buoys and ground-based weather stations) and the physical world as experienced by organisms (niche-level measurements) requires a mechanistic understanding of how ‘environmental signals’ (parameters such as air, surface and water temperature, food availability, water flow) are translated into signals at the scale of the organism or cell (e.g. body temperature, …

Sustainability In A Time Of Climate Change: Developing An Intensive Research Framework For The Platte River Basin And The High Plains Proceedings From The 2008 Climate Change Workshop, Monica Norby, Ashley Washburn

Office of Research and Economic Development: Publications

Proceedings from the 2008 Climate change Workshop, Nebraska Sandhills, May 19-22, 2008. Hosted by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the U.S. Geological Survey

High Latitude Changes In Ice Dynamics And Their Impact On Polar Marine Ecosystems, Mark A. Moline, Nina J. Karnovsky, Zachary Brown, George J. Divoky, Thomas K. Frazer, Charles A. Jacoby, Joseph J. Torres, William R. Fraser

Biological Sciences

Polar regions have experienced significant warming in recent decades. Warming has been most pronounced across the Arctic Ocean Basin and along the Antarctic Peninsula, with significant decreases in the extent and seasonal duration of sea ice. Rapid retreat of glaciers and disintegration of ice sheets have also been documented. The rate of warming is increasing and is predicted to continue well into the current century, with continued impacts on ice dynamics. Climate-mediated changes in ice dynamics are a concern as ice serves as primary habitat for marine organisms central to the food webs of these regions. Changes in the timing …

Proxy-Based Reconstructions Of Hemispheric And Global Surface Temperature Variations Over The Past Two Millennia, Michael E. Mann, Scott Rutherford

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

Following the suggestions of a recent National Research Council report [NRC (National Research Council) (2006) Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (Natl Acad Press, Washington, DC).], we reconstruct surface temperature at hemispheric and global scale for much of the last 2,000 years using a greatly expanded set of proxy data for decadal-to-centennial climate changes, recently updated instrumental data, and complementary methods that have been thoroughly tested and validated with model simulation experiments. Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context. Recent warmth appears anomalous for at least …

Response Of Eelgrass Zostera Marina To Co2 Enrichment: Possible Impacts Of Climate Change And Potential For Remediation Of Coastal Habitats, Sherry L. Palacios, Richard C. Zimmerman

OES Faculty Publications

Projected increases in dissolved aqueous concentrations of carbon dioxide [CO_2(aq)] may have significant impacts on photosynthesis Of CO₂-limited organisms such as seagrasses. Short-term CO_2(aq) enrichment increases photosynthetic rates and reduces light requirements for growth and survival of individual eelgrass Zostera marina L. shoots growing in the laboratory under artificial light regimes for at least 45 d. This study examined the effects of long-term CO_2(aq) enrichment on the performance of eelgrass growing under natural light-replete (33% surface irradiance) and light-limited (5% surface irradiance) conditions for a period of 1 yr. Eelgrass shoots were grown at …

Interaction Of Ice Storms And Management Practices On Current Carbon Sequestration In Forests With Potential Mitigation Under Future Co2 Atmosphere, Heather R. Mccarthy, Ram Oren, Hyun-Seok Kim, Kurt H. Johnsen, Chris Maier, Seth G. Pritchard, Micheal Davis

Faculty Publications

[1] Ice storms are disturbance events with potential impacts on carbon sequestration. Common forest management practices, such as fertilization and thinning, can change wood and stand properties and thus may change vulnerability to ice storm damage. At the same time, increasing atmospheric CO₂ levels may also influence ice storm vulnerability. Here we show that a nonintensively managed pine plantation experienced a ∼250 g C m⁻² reduction in living biomass during a single storm, equivalent to ∼30% of the annual net ecosystem carbon exchange of this ecosystem. Drawing on weather and damage survey data from the entire storm cell, …

Climate Change And Its Effects On Polar Bears, Alex C. Jospe, Bethany C. Peck, Emily Sinnott

Undergraduate Research Symposium (UGRS)

Polar bears are key indicators of the effects of climate change on the arctic ecosystem, because their existence is directly related to the sea ice habitat, where they hunt. As the Arctic continues to warm, their habitat will be reduced further and local extinction is likely to occur, especially in southern populations.

Evidence For Survival Of Pleistocene Climatic Changes In Northern Refugia By The Land Snail Trochoidea Geyeri, David Posada, Markus Pfenninger, Frederic Magnin

Faculty Publications

The study of organisms with restricted dispersal abilities and presence in the fossil record is particularly adequate to understand the impact of climate changes on the distribution and genetic structure of species. Trochoidea geyeri (Soos 1926) is a land snail restricted to a patchy, insular distribution in Germany and France. Fossil evidence suggests that current populations of T. geyeri are relicts of a much more widespread distribution during more favourable climatic periods in the Pleistocene. Results: Phylogeographic analysis of the mitochondrial 16S rDNA and nuclear ITS-1 sequence variation was used to infer the history of the remnant populations of T. …

Environmental Stress Effects On Vigor, Mortality, And Growth In Northern Hardwood Forests Along A Pollution-Climate Gradient, Neil W. Macdonald, John A. Witter, David R. Reed, Andrew J. Burton, Kurt S. Pregitzer, Hal O. Liechty

Peer Reviewed Publications

Concern exists over the effects of interacting environmental stresses on the ecological integrity of temperate forests. Coincidence of sensitivity to drought, increasing occurrence of defoliation, and elevated pollutant deposition has produced speculation that northern hardwood forests may be susceptible to the increased climatic stresses projected for the Great Lakes region. The objective of our study was to examine relationships among environmental stress factors, vigor, mortality, and growth in northern hardwood forests located along a pollution-climate gradient in the Great Lakes region. Between 1987 and 1993, we quantified climatic variables, pollutant deposition, insect defoliation, and tree vigor and growth at five …