Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

School Gardens: Cultivating A Child’S Nutritional Habits, Environmental Knowledge, And Sustainability Practices, Jeffrey Meltzer

Honors Theses

School gardens have existed since the late nineteenth century and today are becoming increasingly popular in many parts of the world, including where I studied in Maine and Australia (AUS). Multiple organizations support school gardens in Maine, including the Maine School Garden Network, which has over 125 registered school gardens. In AUS, the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation primarily supports the school garden movement and has over 800 registered school gardens. While many researchers have studied school gardens, few have compared two countries, focused on environmental sustainability, or investigated Maine in particular. This thesis combines information from literature reviews, and …

Similarities And Differences Between Heterosexual And Homosexual Couples Based On Marq Data, Kraig S. Shattuck

Wayne State University Theses

There has been a lack of comparative research on homosexual couples, comparing them to heterosexual couples, which is also grounded in solid theory. In order to remedy this, evolutionary theory is used to make predictions on similarities and differences between heterosexual and homosexual couples within three domains, relationship satisfaction, jealousy, and mate guarding. It was predicted that 1) homosexual couples would not differ from heterosexual couples in relationship satisfaction; 2) some gender differences relating to jealousy would be the same and some would be reversed in homosexual individuals; 3) mate guarding would be present, but lower, in homosexual individuals as …

Expanding Eco-Visualization: Sculpting Corn Production, Jennifer E. Figg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation expands upon the definition of eco-visualization artwork. EV was originally defined in 2006 by Tiffany Holmes as a way to display the real time consumption statistics of key environmental resources for the goal of promoting ecological literacy. I assert that the final forms of EV artworks are not necessarily dependent on technology, and can differ in terms of media used, in that they can be sculptural, video-based, or static two-dimensional forms that communicate interpreted environmental information. There are two main categories of EV: one that is predominantly screen-based and another that employs a variety of modes of representation …

Ramapough/Ford The Impact And Survival Of An Indigenous Community In The Shadow Of Ford Motor Company’S Toxic Legacy, Chuck Stead

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the history of the Ford Motor Company’s impact upon the Ramapo Watershed of New York and New Jersey, as well as upon the Ramapough Munsi Nation, an indigenous population living there. In a 25 year span the automaker produced a record number of vehicles and dumped a massive amount of lead paint, leaving behind a toxic legacy that continues to plaque the area and its residents. The Ramapough people are not unlike many native nations living in the United States who have experienced industrial excess. This study examines the mindset that allows …

Speed And Resolution In The Age Of Technological Reproducibility, Shawn Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

The rate of acceleration of the biologic and synthetic world has for a while now, been in the process of exponentially speeding up, maxing out servers and landfills, merging with each other, destroying each other. The last prehistoric relics on Earth are absorbing the same oxygen, carbon dioxide and electronic waves in our biosphere as us. A degraded .jpeg enlarged to full screen on a Samsung 4K UHD HU8550 Series Smart TV - 85” Class (84.5” diag.). Within this composite ecology, the ancient limestone of the grand canyon competes with the iMax movie of itself, the production of Mac pros, …

Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) Ecological Knowledge Of Piñon-Juniper Woodlands: Implications For Conservation And Sustainable Resource Use In Two Southern Nevada Protected Areas, Brian John Lefler

Dissertations and Theses

Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) have inhabited the southern Great Basin for thousands of years, and consider Nuvagantu (where snow sits) in the Spring Mountains landscape to be the locus of their creation as a people. Their ancestral territory spans parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and California. My research identifies and describes the heterogeneous character of Nuwuvi ecological knowledge (NEK) of piñon-juniper woodland ecosystems within two federal protected areas (PAs) in southeastern Nevada, the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area (SMNRA) and the Desert National Wildlife Refuge (DNWR), as remembered and practiced to varying degrees by 22 select Nuwuvi knowledge holders. I focus …

Review Of The Face Of The Earth, Ann E. Lundberg

Faculty Publications

Review of SueEllen Campbell, et al. The Face of the Earth: Natural Landscapes, Science, and Culture. Published review is at Western American Literature.

Facing The Wreck: Death, Optimism, And The Fragmented Form, Rachael Marie Schaffner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Walter Benjamin described history as a winged angel who faces backwards, staring perpetually into the past as the violent winds of destiny carry him into the future (Illuminations). Despite a western, post-enlightenment myth of eternal progress, the wreckage of human contributions to history is clearly evident in our 21st-century understanding of anthropogenic impact on global ecology. In the context of these ecological crises (and the resulting political and economic questions), postmodern novels reveal a powerful ability to imagine different ways of living and interacting with the world. This thesis traces the relationship between fragmentation, death, and liminal experiences …

Mitochondrial Dna Variability Among Six South-American Amerindian Villages From The Pano Linguistic Group, Celso T. Mendes-Junior, Aguinaldo L. Simoes

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Although scattered throughout a large geographic area, the members of the Pano linguistic group present strong ethnic, linguistic and cultural homogeneity, a feature that causes them to be considered as components of a same “Pano” tribe. Nevertheless, the genetic homogeneity between Pano villages has not been examined before. To study the genetic structure of the Pano linguistic group, four major Native American mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) founder haplogroups were analyzed in 77 Amerindians from six villages of four Pano tribes (Katukina, Kaxináwa, Marúbo, and Yaminawa) located in the Brazilian Amazon. The central position of these tribes in the continent makes them …

Questioning The “Melting Pot”: Analysis Of Alu Inserts In Three Population Samples From Uruguay, Pedro C. Hidalgo, Patricia Mut, Elizabeth Ackermann, Gonzalo Figueiro, Monica Sans

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The way that immigrants integrate to recipient societies has been discussed for decades, mainly from the perspective of the social sciences. Uruguay, as other American countries, received different waves of European immigrants, although the details of the process of assimilation, when occurred, are unclear. In this paper, we use genetic markers to understand the process experienced by the Basques, one of the major migration waves that populated Uruguay, and its relation to other immigrants as well as to Native American and African descendants. For this purpose, we analyze the allele frequencies of ten ALU loci (A25, ACE, APOA1, B65, F13B, …

Did Pre-Clovis People Inhabit The Paisley Caves (And Why Does It Matter)?, Stuart J. Fiedel

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The date and processes of initial human colonization of the Americas are crucial issues for the understanding of human biological and cultural development. For example, Soares et al. (2009) cited the American archaeological record to validate their proposed revision of the human mitochondrial molecular clock. Their suggested mutation rate puts the date of rapid expansion of Native American clades at around 13,500–15,000 cal BP. Similarly, Poznik et al. (2013) have used the “high-confidence archaeological dating” of the initial peopling of the Americas to calibrate the rates of both Y-chromosome and mtDNA mutation and thereby to reconcile the ages of the …

Pedigree Structure And Kinship Measurements Of A Mid-Michigan Community: A New North American Population Isolate Identified, Joseph D. Bonner, Rachel Fisher, James Klein, Qing Lu, Ellen Wilch, Karen H. Friderici, Jill L. Elfenbein, Debra L. Schutte, Brian C. Schutte

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Previous studies identified a cluster of individuals with an autosomal recessive form of deafness that resides in a small region of mid-Michigan. We hypothesized that affected members from this community descend from a defined founder population. Using public records and personal interviews, we constructed a genealogical database that includes the affected individuals and their extended families as descendants of 461 settlers who emigrated from the Eifel region of Germany between 1836 and 1875. The genealogical database represents a 13-generation pedigree that includes 27,747 descendants of these settlers. Among these descendants, 13,784 are presumed living. Many of the extant descendants reside …

Effect Of Recent Historical Events On Migration And Isonymic Stratification Among The Rama Amerindians From Nicaragua, Norberto F. Baldi

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The Rama Amerindians from southern Nicaragua are one of few indigenous populations inhabiting the east coast and lowlands of southern Central America. Early 18th century ethnohistorical accounts depicted the Rama as a mobile hunter-gatherer and horticulturalists group dispersed in household units along southern Nicaraguan rivers. However, during the 19th and 20th centuries, Rama settlement patterns changed to aggregated communities due to increased competition for local resources resulting from non-indigenous immigration. This study’s objective was to discern the degree of relatedness between and within subdivisions of seven of these communities based on patterns of surname variation and genealogical data. We applied …

Conservative Evolution, Sustainability, And Culture, Gábor Náray-Szabó

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Conservative Evolution, Sustainability, and Culture" Gábor Náray-Szabó argues that evolution is conservative in the sense that throughout the history of the universe old constructs like elementary particles, amino acids, and living cells remained conserved while the world evolved/evolves in complexity. A similar process can be observed in cultural evolution as components of society and culture continue to evolve. Considering the increasing pressure on natural resources by material consumption, a close alliance between past, present, and future generations is unavoidable and thus Náray-Szabó posits that concepts of conservative evolution and sustainability are related. However, in order to avoid …

From The Inside Out, And Through., Dominique Ovalle

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

These photographs describe “Science” born of consumerism, hijacked by me, economically disenfranchised, or rather—temporarily embarrassed, artist. I was putzing around Malibu—my old college stomping ground, looking for free food; maybe a sample of some gourmet $5 chocolate, and all I got were these photographs.

The Evolutionary Function Of Conscious Information Processing Is Revealed By Its Task-Dependency In The Olfactory System, Andreas Keller

Publications and Research

Although many responses to odorous stimuli are mediated without olfactory information being consciously processed, some olfactory behaviors require conscious information processing. I will here contrast situations in which olfactory information is processed consciously to situations in which it is processed non-consciously. This contrastive analysis reveals that conscious information processing is required when an organism is faced with tasks in which there are many behavioral options available. I therefore propose that it is the evolutionary function of conscious information processing to guide behaviors in situations in which the organism has to choose between many possible responses.

Religion, Partisanship, And Attitudes Toward Science Policy, Ted G. Jelen, Linda A. Lockett

Political Science Faculty Research

We examine issues involving science which have been contested in recent public debate. These “contested science” issues include human evolution, stem-cell research, and climate change. We find that few respondents evince consistently skeptical attitudes toward science issues, and that religious variables are generally strong predictors of attitudes toward individual issues. Furthermore, and contrary to analyses of elite discourse, partisan identification is not generally predictive of attitudes toward contested scientific issues.

Sound Environment Programming The Post-1945 Moment : Charles Olson, Sun Ra, John Cage, And The Way Back In, Michael Peters

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

On the eve of 1945, when the Manhattan Project's machinations to split the atom were almost in place, another physicist published a little book--What Is Life? Applying physics to biology, Erwin Schrödinger described how genetic "code-script" could create aperiodic (non-repeating) new life from periodic materials, revealing the "secret" of life. This dilemma of life or death defines the post-1945 moment. Fraught with Hamlet-like uncertainty, I argue this moment is the apex of a long-fomenting, eco-historical crisis where Western thinking had severed "Man" from "Nature." Sound Environment Programming is a term I invented to detail how Charles Olson, Sun Ra, and …

Evolution, Snakes, And God: A Brief Argument For Agreement, Jessica Stanze

A with Honors Projects

Comparing the evolution and religious connotations of the snake, this short essay suggests that evolutionists and creationists might reach common ground if they attempted to collaborate.

Review Of Darwinism And The Divine: Evolutionary Thought And Natural Theology, Timothy Shanahan

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

A Genealogy Of Ecological Rhetoric: Heraclitus, Bacon, Darwin And Huxley, Jared Grogan

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation is a genealogical study of historical intersections between rhetoric and ecology. Studying the works of Heraclitus, Francis Bacon, T.H. Huxley and Darwin as "bridge figures" in the history of rhetoric, science and ecological thought, I examine how their rhetorical theories and strategies (as discursive practices, performances and techniques) form a genealogy that bridges rhetorical and ecological theories and practices. My analysis studies their critical assessments and uses of rhetoric as it intersects with each figure's new investigations into natural philosophy, nature, and evolutionary biology, while drawing out relevant lessons for contemporary ecological and rhetorical thinkers. The main threads …

The City In Mind: Environmental Literacy And Adaptation In Nineteenth-Century British Literature, Adam Edward Watkins

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation argues that a new paradigm of selfhood emerged in nineteenth-century British literature, one that recognized the individual will and environmental influence not as antithetical but as dialectical forces in the formation of the self. The concept of an externally negotiated subject challenges both the inward and socially determined conceptions of self that have dominated the relevant criticism. Informed by empiricist, associationist, and evolutionary theories of the mind, the portrayals of subject-formation in this study highlight the radical changes occurring in the human environment in nineteenth-century, which catalyzed the conception of a malleable yet self-forming subject. Along with the …

Tracking Fish And Human Response To Abrupt Environmental Change At Tse-Whit-Zen: A Large Native American Village On The Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, Kathryn Anne Mohlenhoff

Dissertations and Theses

Evidence of large earthquakes occurring along the Pacific Northwest coast is reflected in coastal stratigraphy from Oregon to British Columbia, where there also exists an extensive archaeological record of Native American occupation. Tse-whit-zen, a large Native American village dating between 1824 and 54 cal B.P. located on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, was excavated with exceptionally fine stratigraphic control allowing for precise comparison of natural and cultural records. Here I report on the >10,000 fish remains from one 2x2 m excavation block; this assemblage spans one earthquake event, allowing study of changes in relative taxonomic abundance through time that …

Fitness: Philosophical Problems, Grant Ramsey, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

Fitness plays many roles throughout evolutionary theory, from a measure of populations in the wild to a central element in abstract theoretical presentations of natural selection. It has thus been the subject of an extensive philosophical literature, which has primarily centred on the way to understand the relationship between fitness values and reproductive outcomes. If fitness is a probabilistic or statistical quantity, how is it to be defined in general theoretical contexts? How can it be measured? Can a single conceptual model for fitness be offered that applies to all biological cases, or must fitness measures be case-specific? Philosophers have …

The Emerald Ash Borer, Emily Bryant

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

An Emerald Ash Borer made from recycled natural materials to create sustainable art.

A Distributed Intelligence Approach To Multidisciplinarity: Encouraging Divergent Thinking In Complex Science Issues In Society., Jarod Kawasaki, Dai Toyofuku

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The scientific issues that face society today are increasingly complex, open-ended and tentative (Sadler, 2004). Finding solutions to these issues, not only requires an understanding of the science, but also, concurrently dealing with political, social, and economic dimensions that exist (Hodson, 2003). For example, 40 years after the first congressional hearing on climate change held by Al Gore in 1976, the 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that climate change is still getting worse, despite efforts by governments, businesses, social actors such as Non-Government Organizations, and scientists. With the top minds in the world, across all disciplines, …

(Review) Deep History: The Architecture Of Past And Present, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

The article reviews the book "Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present," edited by Andrew Shryock and Daniel Lord Smail.

Three Poems: The Lorenz Transformations, Rotating The Strange Attractor To Find The Principal Components, The Sieve Of Eratosthenes, Robin Chapman

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of Female Choice: Evolutionary Perspectives On Constraints, Expressions, And Variations, David Frederick, Tania A. Reynolds, Maryanne L. Fisher

Psychology Faculty Books and Book Chapters

This chapter introduces the reader to some of the influential perspectives on female mate choice in human evolutionary biology, including parental investment theory. We then present two key theories in evolutionary psychology that have been applied to understand variations in women’s mating preferences and choices: sexual strategies theory and strategic pluralism theory. Although the importance of female choice has gained widespread acceptance in the biological sciences, the influence that female choice has on mating systems can be limited by many factors, such as control over mating decisions by parents and men’s control over women’s sexuality. Despite these constraints on female …

Nietzsche And Darwin, Babette Babich

Working Papers

Abstract

I argue against the popular view of Nietzsche as Darwinist and I concur with other Nietzsche scholars who have also noted that other authors worked in Nietzsche’s thinking in association with Darwin, not only Spencer and Malthus but also Roux and Haeckel among others which also for Nietzsche included Empedocles and other ancient scientists. Nietzsche offers plain condemnation of Darwin’s views but he is also often associated with Darwin owing to Darwin’s racism and his own vision of rank-order. I conclude with an emphasis on style and Nietzsche’s reading of antiquity to highlight the distinction he sought to make …