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Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Successional Processes In The Benthic Invertebrate Communities At Gray’S Reef National Marine Sanctuary, Alexis A. Bivens Jul 2018

Successional Processes In The Benthic Invertebrate Communities At Gray’S Reef National Marine Sanctuary, Alexis A. Bivens

Honors College Theses

While the process of community development has been studied in terrestrial habitats since the turn of the 20th century, similar information is not as readily available in marine systems. Understanding patterns of community development is essential to predicting recovery potential and to designing effective marine protected areas. In the South Atlantic Bight, invertebrate communities on hard substrata can differ significantly from one rocky outcrop to another, but the factors driving these differences are not well understood. I documented the initial development of the benthic invertebrate community at Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary (GRNMS) to address the prediction that this system …


Testing Viability Of Oligonucleotide Primers On Microsatellite Markers Amplified By Polymerase Chain Reaction On Dermacentor Variabilis Samples From The Bulloch County Region Of Georgia, Usa, Danielle Souza Apr 2018

Testing Viability Of Oligonucleotide Primers On Microsatellite Markers Amplified By Polymerase Chain Reaction On Dermacentor Variabilis Samples From The Bulloch County Region Of Georgia, Usa, Danielle Souza

Honors College Theses

Dermacentor variabilis, more commonly known as the wood tick, or the American dog tick, can be found all over North America. D. variabilis is a common tick in Bulloch county, Georgia, USA, and little is known about the population structure of this population of the species. Microsatellite markers are able to locate sections of the genome and can aid in estimating relatedness among individuals in a population. Six different oligonucleotide primer pairs were published for D. variabilis, however, published and non-published works indicated that not all of those primer pairs were working equally well for PCR. This study is …


Comparison Of Three Benthic Macroinvertebrate Passive Sampling Devices For Non-Wadeable Streams, Kelsey A. Laymon Jan 2018

Comparison Of Three Benthic Macroinvertebrate Passive Sampling Devices For Non-Wadeable Streams, Kelsey A. Laymon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rivers and streams provide essential ecosystem services to the degree that the monitoring and maintenance of these systems becomes imperative. Biomonitoring provides managers and policymakers with the tools to make informed decisions, and macroinvertebrates are often the object of biomonitoring because they are ubiquitous in most systems and are known to be good indicators of water quality. However, methods for sampling macroinvertebrates in non-wadeable streams (i.e., large rivers) have not been standardized across states and regions and an established method for macroinvertebrate biomonitoring in large rivers of Georgia is not currently available. My study compared macroinvertebrates collected with three types …


Predictors Of Fish Assemblage Structure And Dynamics In Atlantic Coastal Plain Streams, Rebecca Scott Jan 2018

Predictors Of Fish Assemblage Structure And Dynamics In Atlantic Coastal Plain Streams, Rebecca Scott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Effective management of freshwater fishes requires a mechanistic understanding of the drivers of assemblage composition; in other words, what determines who is where and when. Stream fish assemblages are potentially influenced by environmental factors that act on multiple spatiotemporal scales, but the relative influence of these drivers may vary between geophysically distinct regions. This study sought to determine the patterns and drivers of fish taxonomic and functional assemblage composition in the coastal plain, a region possessing unique hydrologies, faunas, and physiochemical conditions. I addressed this goal using two complementary chapters, both of which utilized environmental and biotic data collected from …


Characterizing The Complex Relationship Between The Brown Widow Spider And Its Bacterial Endosymbiont, Wolbachia, Emily Knight Jan 2018

Characterizing The Complex Relationship Between The Brown Widow Spider And Its Bacterial Endosymbiont, Wolbachia, Emily Knight

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The brown widow spider, Latrodectus geometricus (C. L. Koch 1841), has been found to harbor the maternally inherited bacterial endosymbiont Wolbachia pipientis (Hertig and Wolbach 1924), but endosymbiont infection frequency varies widely among Southeastern US populations. Wolbachia is known to manipulate the reproduction of its hosts through male feminization, parthenogenesis, male killing, and cytoplasmic incompatibility. In brown widows, Wolbachia does not alter sex ratios, but any other effects the symbiont has on the spider are unknown. In my first chapter, I assess if there is linkage between Wolbachia infection and maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in three brown widow populations. …


Foraging Ecology Of A Winter Bird Community In Southeastern Georgia, Rachel E. Mowbray Jan 2018

Foraging Ecology Of A Winter Bird Community In Southeastern Georgia, Rachel E. Mowbray

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Classical views on community structure emphasized deterministic processes and the importance of competition in shaping communities. However, the processes responsible for shaping avian communities remain controversial. Attempts to understand distributions and abundances of species are complicated by the fact that birds are highly mobile. Many species migrate biannually between summer breeding grounds and wintering grounds. The goal of this study was to test four hypotheses that attempt to explain how migratory species integrate into resident assemblages of birds (Empty-Niche Hypothesis, Competitive-Exclusion Hypothesis, Niche-Partitioning Hypothesis, and Generalist-Migrant Hypothesis). I collected data on birds foraging during the winter of 2017-2018 in Magnolia …


Environmental Factors Affecting Hatch Success In The Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Caretta Caretta), Mattie J. Whitesell Jan 2018

Environmental Factors Affecting Hatch Success In The Loggerhead Sea Turtle (Caretta Caretta), Mattie J. Whitesell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) is a species federally listed as “threatened” whose global populations are declining. Georgia Department of Natural Resources conservation protocols for this species require the daily monitoring of nesting activity and permit physical relocation of nests which are at risk of being eroded or flooded by storms and high tides in order to increase hatch success--the proportion of hatched to unhatched eggs. Relocated nests are moved to an area with higher elevation in order to avoid flooding, but other variables such as increased temperature and decreased moisture are introduced when relocating. For years temperature …