Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

Supporting New England Communities To Become River-Smart: Policies And Programs That Can Help New England Towns Thrive Despite River Floods, Eve Vogel, Et. Al.

Water Reports

This report aims to help New England’s communities and their residents, as well as the governments thatserve them, to better deal with and adjust to riverfloods. It points to practical policy solutions at federal, state and regional levels that can support NewEngland communities to become what we call river-smart.

Quantifying The Human Influence On Fire Ignition Across The Western Usa, Emily J. Fusco, John T. Abatzoglou, Jennifer K. Balch, John T. Finn, Bethany Bradley

Environmental Conservation Faculty Publication Series

Humans have a profound effect on fire regimes by increasing the frequency of ignitions. Although ignition is an integral component of understanding and predicting fire, to date fire models have not been able to isolate the ignition location, leading to inconsistent use of anthropogenic ignition proxies. Here, we identified fire ignitions from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) Burned Area Product (2000–2012) to create the first remotely sensed, consistently derived, and regionally comprehensive fire ignition data set for the western United States. We quantified the spatial relationships between several anthropogenic land-use/disturbance features and ignition for ecoregions within the study area …

Modeling Effectiveness Of Low Impact Development On Runoff Volume In The Tan Brook Watershed, Christopher Hewes, Robert F. Smith, Craig Nicolson

Research

The Tan Brook is a heavily channelized stream that runs through an urbanized watershed in Amherst, MA. It poses a stormwater management problem for the University of Massachusetts Amherst due to flooding of soccer fields and erosion of a drainage ditch. The purpose of this study was to estimate reductions in runoff volume to the Tan Brook based on the hypothetical implementation of permeable pavements in various combinations of parking lots, driveways, roadways, and sidewalks, which cover 26% of the watershed area. A spreadsheet model-based approach utilized the Watershed Treatment Model to estimate runoff volume. The percent imperviousness of various …

An Investigation Of Human-Error Rates In Wildlife Photographic Identification; Implications For The Use Of Citizen Scientists, Megan Chesser

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Rapid technological advancements in digital cameras and widespread public access to the internet have inspired many researchers to consider alternative methods for collecting, analyzing, and distributing scientific data. Two emerging fields of study that have capitalized on these developments are “citizen science” and photo-id in wildlife capture-mark-recapture (CMR) studies. Both approaches offer unprecedented flexibility and potential for acquiring previously inconceivable datasets, yet both remain dependent on data collection by human observers. The absence of rigorous assessment of observer error rates causes many scientists to resist citizen science altogether or to fail to incorporate citizen-collected data into ecological analyses. This same …

Runx2 Tandem Repeats And The Evolution Of Facial Length In Placental Mammals, Jason M. Kamilar, Marie A. Pointer, Vera Warmuth, Stephen G.B. Chester, Frédéric Delsuc, Nicholas I. Mundy, Robert J. Asher, Brenda J. Bradley

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Background

When simple sequence repeats are integrated into functional genes, they can potentially act as evolutionary ‘tuning knobs’, supplying abundant genetic variation with minimal risk of pleiotropic deleterious effects. The genetic basis of variation in facial shape and length represents a possible example of this phenomenon. Runt-related transcription factor 2 (RUNX2), which is involved in osteoblast differentiation, contains a functionally-important tandem repeat of glutamine and alanine amino acids. The ratio of glutamines to alanines (the QA ratio) in this protein seemingly influences the regulation of bone development. Notably, in domestic breeds of dog, and in carnivorans in general, the ratio …

The Climatic Niche Diversity Of Malagasy Primates: A Phylogenetic Approach, Jason M. Kamilar, Kathleen M. Muldoon

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Background

Numerous researchers have posited that there should be a strong negative relationship between the evolutionary distance among species and their ecological similarity. Alternative evidence suggests that members of adaptive radiations should display no relationship between divergence time and ecological similarity because rapid evolution results in near-simultaneous speciation early in the clade's history. In this paper, we performed the first investigation of ecological diversity in a phylogenetic context using a mammalian adaptive radiation, the Malagasy primates.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We collected data for 43 extant species including: 1) 1064 species by locality samples, 2) GIS climate data for each sampling locality, …

Ontogenetic Shifts In The Costs Of Living In Groups: Focal Observations Of A Pholcid Spider (Holocnemus Pluchei), Elizabeth Jakob, Julie Blanchong, Mary Popson, Kristine Sedey, Michael Summerfield

Psychological and Brain Sciences Faculty Publication Series

Holocnemus pluchei spiders (Family Pholcidae) facultatively live in groups: sometimes they live alone and sometimes they share webs. In the field groups vary in size and composition and include spiders of all ages and either sex. Group membership is flexible and individuals move frequently among groups. To understand group formation and maintenance it is necessary to understand the costs of group membership. We used focal animal sampling to investigate the cost of group living for spiders of different ages across a range of group sizes. Both spider age and group size affected the costs incurred by group-living spiders. There was …