Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

Visual Opsin Diversity In Anurans, Leah Perez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Among major vertebrate groups, anurans are understudied with regards to their visual systems and how they function. This study sampled North American anurans representing diverse evolutionary and life histories and which likely possess visual systems adapted to meet different ecological needs. Using standard molecular techniques, sequences were obtained for four opsins—the protein component of visual pigments—expressed in anuran retinas. Amino acid sequences of the genes RH1, LWS, SWS1, and SWS2 were compared across taxa to identify variable sites, as such variation can shift the spectral sensitivity of visual pigments and thus alter dim-light and color vision. Some of the amino …

Nesting Success Of Dickcissel (Spiza Americana) And Non-Breeding Grassland Bird Use Of Northwest Arkansas’ Remnant And Restored Tallgrass Prairies, Alyssa L. Derubeis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dwindling populations of North American grassland birds are linked to habitat loss. Tallgrass prairie only covers 3% of its pre-settlement-era range. Small-scale restoration projects attempt to increase acreage for prairie avifauna, and while some breeding grassland species are present at these sites, nesting success and non-breeding use are still largely unknown. Both life history aspects are required for effective grassland bird conservation. My first objective was to access nest success of the Dickcissel (Spiza americana) at two remnant and two restored tallgrass prairies in Northwest Arkansas. From May-August 2017 and 2018, I found 114 nests that I monitored to determine …

Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Livestock Guardian Dogs: Loss-Prevention, Behavior, Space-Use, And Human Dimensions, Daniel Kinka

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Livestock guardian dogs – or “LGDs” – are commonly used by domestic sheep ranchers and reduce the need for killing wild carnivores to protect livestock. LGDs are mostly used in the United States to reduce the number of livestock killed by coyotes, but whether they can prevent killing by larger carnivores like wolves and grizzly bears is unclear. It is important to identify which behavioral traits and LGD breeds work best for guarding livestock so that ranchers can protect their stock and environmentalists can enjoy a greater number of wild animals on the landscape. This study investigated the effectiveness of …

Using Tree-Ring Growth And Stable Isotopes To Explore Ponderosa Pine Ecophysiological Responses To Climate Variability And The 2012-2015 California Drought, Rachel M. Keen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Climate warming in recent decades has resulted in more frequent and severe drought events in the western United States. These changes are projected to continue, making it exceedingly important to understand how forests respond to severe drought stress, and how we can manage these forests to reduce mortality during future events. The 2012-2015 California drought is a recent example of a severe, multi-year drought that was coupled with an epidemic-scale outbreak of western pine beetle, killing nearly 90% of ponderosa pines in the central and southern Sierra Nevadas. In the first portion of this study, we compared pairs of surviving …

Ecosystem Functioning Of Great Salt Lake Wetlands, Maya Cassidy Pendleton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The Great Salt Lake (GSL) wetlands account for ~75% of all Utah wetlands and provide not only critical habitat for millions of migratory birds, but also provide valuable ecosystem functions and services as well as economic benefits to Utahns. However, these wetlands are facing an aggressive invader, Phragmites australis, that has spreading across the GSL wetlands and replacing native wetland habitats. Wetland managers have spent countless resources and time trying to control the spread of P. australis and restore GSL wetlands. However, we do not fully understand how these wetlands functions and services are being altered with this habitat …

The Vulnerability Of Littoral Structures Under Multiyear Drought Conditions, Jenna M. Keeton

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Climate change is associated with altered environmental conditions and shifting mosaics of suitable habitats for organisms. Climate change in the form of drought can shift important lake shoreline habitats downslope, altering the lakes chemistry and habitat availability. Additionally, negative biological consequences can occur after a loss of submerged habitat along shorelines, hereafter littoral habitat. The objective of this study is to evaluate whether littoral habitat is lost (cobble, coarse woody habitat (fallen trees; CWH), and aquatic vegetation) under drought conditions across the United States. I used the National Lakes Assessment physical habitat data collected in summer 2012, when 75% of …

Plasticity In The Human Gut Microbiome Defies Evolutionary Constraints, Andres Gomez, Ashok Kumar Sharma, Elizabeth K. Mallott, Klara J. Petrzelkova, Carolyn A. Jost Robinson, Carl J. Yeoman, Franck Carbonero, Barbora Pafco, Jessica M. Rothman, Alexander Ulanov, Klara Vickova, Katherine R. Amato, Stephanie L. Schnorr, Nathaniel J. Dominy, David Modry, Angelique Todd, Manolito Torralba, Karen E. Nelson, Michael B. Burns, Ran Blekhman, Melissa Remis, Rebecca M. Stumpf, Brenda A. Wilson, H. Rex Gaskins, Paul A. Garber, Bryan A. White, Steven R. Leigh

Anthropology Faculty Research

The gut microbiome of primates, including humans, is reported to closely follow host evolutionary history, with gut microbiome composition being specific to the genetic background of its primate host. However, the comparative models used to date have mainly included a limited set of closely related primates. To further understand the forces that shape the primate gut microbiome, with reference to human populations, we expanded the comparative analysis of variation among gut microbiome compositions and their primate hosts, including 9 different primate species and 4 human groups characterized by a diverse set of subsistence patterns (n = 448 samples). The results …

Validation Of A Death Assay For Angiostrongylus Cantonensis Larvae (L3) Using Propidium Iodide In A Rat Model (Rattus Norvegicus), Susan I. Jarvi, John Jacob, Robert T. Sugihara, Israel L. Leinbach, Ina H. Klasner, Lisa M. Kaluna, Kirsten A. Snook, M. Kathleen Howe, Steven H. Jacquier, Ingo Lange, Abigail L. Atkinson, Ashley R. Deane, Chris N. Niebuhr, Shane R. Siers

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Angiostrongylus cantonensis is a pathogenic nematode and the cause of neuroangiostrongyliasis, an eosinophilic meningitis more commonly known as rat lungworm disease. Transmission is thought to be primarily due to ingestion of infective third stage larvae (L3) in gastropods, on produce, or in contaminated water. The gold standard to determine the effects of physical and chemical treatments on the infectivity of A. cantonensis L3 larvae is to infect rodents with treated L3 larvae and monitor for infection, but animal studies are laborious and expensive and also raise ethical concerns. This study demonstrates propidium iodide (PI) to be a reliable marker of …

Eutherian Biogeography During The Puercan North American Land Mammal Age (Paleocene, Earliest Danian): Problems And Potential Solutions, Jason Sterling Silviria

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

The Puercan North American Land Mammal Age (NALMA) is the earliest major North American terrestrial biochron of the Cenozoic era, spanning roughly the first one million years of the Paleogene period (Paleocene epoch, Danian stage; ~66.04-65.12 Ma). It is typified by the explosive ecomorphological diversification of the mammalian clade Eutheria (particularly our subclade, Placentalia), following the annihilation of non-avian dinosaurs and “archaic” mammal groups during the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event. The spatiotemporal mode and tempo of Puercan eutherian diversification has long been the subject of debate, with disagreements over biogeographic zonation. The traditional model – based largely on well-sampled, …

Reduced Alphabet Of Prebiotic Amino Acids Optimally Encodes The Conformational Space Of Diverse Extant Protein Folds, Armando D. Solis

Publications and Research

Background

There is wide agreement that only a subset of the twenty standard amino acids existed prebiotically in sufficient concentrations to form functional polypeptides. We ask how this subset, postulated as {A,D,E,G,I,L,P,S,T,V}, could have formed structures stable enough to found metabolic pathways. Inspired by alphabet reduction experiments, we undertook a computational analysis to measure the structural coding behavior of sequences simplified by reduced alphabets. We sought to discern characteristics of the prebiotic set that would endow it with unique properties relevant to structure, stability, and folding.

Results

Drawing on a large dataset of single-domain proteins, we employed an information-theoretic measure …

Solar Eclipse Has Little Discernible Effect On Bat Activity, Michael J. Bender, Sara Robertson

Georgia Journal of Science

N/A - Research Note

Persistence And Turnover In Desert Plant Communities During A 37-Yr Period Of Land Use And Climate Change, Scott R. Abella, Ross J. Guida, Chris L. Roberts, Carrie M. Norman, James S. Holland

Life Sciences Faculty Research

Understanding long‐term changes in ecological communities during global change is a priority for 21st‐century ecology. Deserts, already at climatic extremes, are of unique interest because they are projected to be ecosystems most responsive to global change. Within a 500‐km2 landscape in the Mojave Desert, USA, we measured perennial plant communities at 100 sites three times (1979, 2008, and 2016) during 37 yr to evaluate six hypotheses of community change. These hypotheses encompassed shifts in community measures (e.g., diversity, cover) and species elevational distributions, biotic homogenization, disproportionately large change at the highest elevations, relationships between turnover and species’ responses to disturbance …

Ecology Of Upland Snake Communities In Managed Montane Longleaf Pine Habitats Of Georgia, Miranda Gulsby

Master of Science in Integrative Biology Theses

Longleaf pine ecosystem decline in the Southeast United States has led to intensive land management implementation with the goal to benefit both the ecosystem and at-risk species. Addressing at-risk snake populations in these longleaf pine ecosystems, for instance, requires understanding both community and species level ecology of snakes in these managed forests. Data for snakes in the montane (mountain) longleaf pine habitats remains unclear since management practice implementation. Currently, intensive restoration of montane longleaf pine habitats is taking place within two Wildlife Management Areas (WMA) in the Raccoon Creek Watershed of Northwest Georgia, Sheffield and Paulding Forest. These areas differ …

An Early Modern Human Outside Africa, Eric Delson

Publications and Research

Analysis of two fossils from a Greek cave has shed light on early hominins in Eurasia. One fossil is the earliest known specimen of Homo sapiens found outside Africa; the other is a Neanderthal who lived 40,000 years later.

Contact Rates With Nesting Birds Before And After Invasive Snake Removal: Estimating The Effects Of Trap-Based Control, Amy A. Yackel Adams, Melia G. Nafus, Page E. Klug, Björn Lardner, M.J. Mazurek, Julie A. Savidge, Robert N. Reed

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Invasive predators are responsible for almost 60% of all vertebrate extinctions worldwide with the most vulnerable faunas occurring on islands. The brown treesnake (Boiga irregularis) is a notorious invasive predator that caused the extirpation or extinction of most native forest birds on Guam. The success of avian reintroduction efforts on Guam will depend on whether snake-control techniques sufficiently reduce contact rates between brown treesnakes and reintroduced birds. Mouse-lure traps can successfully reduce brown treesnake populations at local scales. Over a 22-week period both with and without active snake removal, we evaluated snake-trap contact rates for mouse- and bird-lure traps. Bird-lure …

The ‘Law Of Environmental Dependence’ - Biology And Ethics In The Work Of Ernest Everett Just: + Found – Some 251 Mostly Typed Pages, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Abstract-

“The Origin of Man’s Ethical Behavior” (circa October 1941) by Ernest Everett Just and Hedwig A. Schnetzler Just - is an unpublished book manuscript about the biological origins and evolution of ethical behavior, and about “the law of environmental dependence.” Missing since Just’s death in October 1941, it was found and identified in May 2018 among the collected papers of Ernest Everett Just preserved at the Howard University Moorland-Spingarn Research Center in Washington, DC. In addition to the 1996 US postage with the caption “Ernest E. Just, Biologist,” we now have reason to add two new postage stamps with …

An Evaluation Of The Registration And Use Prospects For Four Candidate Toxicants For Controlling Invasive Mongooses (Herpestes Javanicus Auropunctatus), Emily W. Ruell, Chris N. Niebuhr, Robert T. Sugihara, Shane R. Siers

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The eradication or control of invasive small Indian mongooses from islands likely requires toxic baiting when removal by trapping proves insufficient. The one toxic bait currently registered for mongooses in the United States has relatively low palatability and efficacy for mongooses. Developing and registering a new pesticide can be very expensive, while funding for developing toxicants for mongooses is limited. Once registered, use of a toxic bait may be hindered by other factors, such as public opposition to an inhumane toxicant, poorer efficacy than expected, or if the toxic bait is difficult for applicators to apply or store. Therefore, we …

Mixing It Up: The Impact Of Episodic Introgression On The Evolution Of High-Latitude Mesocarnivores, Jocelyn P. Colella

Biology ETDs

At high latitudes, climatic oscillations have triggered repeated episodes of organismal divergence by geographically isolating populations. For terrestrial species, extended isolation in glacial refugia – ice-free regions that enable terrestrial species persistence through glacial maxima – is hypothesized to stimulate allopatric divergence. Alternatively, upon glacial recession, divergent populations expanded from independent glacial refugia and often contacted other diverging populations. In the absence of reproductive isolating mechanisms, this biogeographic process may trigger hybridization and ultimately, gene flow between divergent taxa. My dissertation research aims to understand how these episodic periods of isolation and contact have impacted the evolution of high latitude …

Taxonomic Features And Comparison Of The Gut Microbiome From Two Edible Fungus-Farming Termites (Macrotermes Falciger, M. Natalensis) Harvested In The Vhembe District Of Limpopo, South Africa, Stephanie L. Schnorr, Courney A. Hofman, Shandukani R. Netschifhefhe, Frances D. Duncan, Tanvi P. Honap, Julie Lesnik, Cecil M. Lewis

Anthropology Faculty Research

Background Termites are an important food resource for many human populations around the world, and are a good supply of nutrients. The fungus-farming ‘higher’ termite members of Macrotermitinae are also consumed by modern great apes and are implicated as critical dietary resources for early hominins. While the chemical nutritional composition of edible termites is well known, their microbiomes are unexplored in the context of human health. Here we sequenced the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene of gut microbiota extracted from the whole intestinal tract of two Macrotermes sp. soldiers collected from the Limpopo region of South Africa. Results …

Climate Change, Snow Mold And The Bromus Tectorum Invasion: Mixed Evidence For Release From Cold Weather Pathogens, Danielle M. Smull, Nicole Pendleton, Andrew R. Kleinhesselink, Peter B. Adler

Ecology Center Publications

Climate change is reducing the depth and duration of winter snowpack, leading to dramatic changes in the soil environment with potentially important ecological consequences. Previous experiments in the Intermountain West of North America indicated that loss of snowpack increases survival and population growth rates of the invasive annual grass Bromus tectorum; however, the underlying mechanism is unknown. We hypothesized that reduced snowpack might promote B. tectorum population growth by decreasing damage from snow molds, a group of subnivean fungal pathogens. To test this hypothesis, we conducted greenhouse and field experiments to investigate the interaction between early snowmelt and either …

Seedling Emergence Patterns Of Six Restoration Species In Soils From Two Big Sagebrush Plant Communities, Lacey E. Wilder, Kari E. Veblen, Eugene W. Schupp, Thomas A. Monaco

Ecology Center Publications

Despite the critical need to improve degraded herbaceous understory conditions in many semiarid ecosystems, the influence of soil properties on seedling emergence of species seeded in shrubland plant communities is largely unexplored. We evaluated emergence patterns of 6 restoration species in soils from wyomingensis (i.e., Wyoming big sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis [Beetle & A. Young] S.L. Welsh) and vaseyana (i.e., mountain big sagebrush, A. t. ssp. vaseyana [Rydb.] Beetle) plant communities that differed in soil texture, soil organic matter content, and soil water-holding capacity. We conducted 2 separate experiments that regularly wetted soils to standardized soil water potentials (i.e., …

Probability, Populations, Phylogenetics And Hominin Speciation, Niccolo Caldararo

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

A number of recent articles have appeared on the hominin Denisova fossil remains. Many of them focus on attempts to produce DNA sequences from the extracted samples. Often these project mtDNA sequences from the fossil remains of a number of Neandertal fossils and the Denisovans in an attempt to understand the evolution of Mid Pleistocene human ancestors. These papers, introduce a number of problems in the interpretation of speciation in hominins. One concerns the degradation of the ancient DNA and its interpretation as authentic genetic information. Another concerns the idea of “species” versus that of “population” and the use of …

Connecting The Dots: Exploring The Relationship Between Avian Eggshell Pigmentation And Paternal Provisioning Effort, Kara E. Hodges

Theses and Dissertations

In a number of bird species, eggs laid by females breeding in the same population can vary extensively in the extent of their eggshell pigmentation, but the adaptive significance of this intraspecific variation remains unknown. One hypothesis posits that shell pigmentation is an honest signal of female quality that reflects her level of oxidative stress, one that is used by males to inform their subsequent paternal investment. We employed a reciprocal clutch cross-fostering design to test whether provisioning by male house wrens (Troglodytes aedon) responds to the clutch pigmentation of their mates. In experimental replicates, dark clutches were swapped with …

A Tentative List Of The Land Snails Of Georgia, U.S.A., Zachary I. Felix, Michael A. Dubuc, Hassan A. Rana

Georgia Journal of Science

Because of their high ecological and conservation value, and because we know so little about the group, we compiled a systematic if tentative list of land snails from the state of Georgia. After gleaning a list of species from a monograph on the land snails of eastern United States, written by Leslie Hubricht in 1985, we realized that many species whose ecological requirements are found in Georgia had not been documented there. Therefore, we developed a qualitative model to predict the likelihood that these candidate species occur in Georgia and would eventually be documented. We tested the model with collections …

The Multifaceted Effects Induced By Floods On The Macroinvertebrate Communities Inhabiting A Sinking Cave Stream, Octavian Pacioglu, Nicoleta Ianovici, Mărioara N. Filimon, Adrian Sinitean, Gabriel Iacob, Henrietta Barabas, Alexandru Pahomi, Andrei Acs, Hanelore Muntean, Lucian Pârvulescu

International Journal of Speleology

First-order sinking cave streams experience considerable hydrological variability, including spates and periods of base-flow during dry seasons. Early-summer flooding on a first-order stream sinking in Ciur-Ponor Cave (Romania) represented a suitable opportunity to test the response of the macroinvertebrate community and of basal food resources quantity and diversity to such a disturbance event. The invertebrate community and basal resources (i.e., woody debris, leaves, fine particulate organic matter and epilithon) were collected from three sampling sites, before and after the flood. The sampling strategy followed an up-downstream gradient of both species diversity and quantity of allochtonous organic matter decrease as the …

Stable Isotope Geochemistry Of Shelled Marine Invertebrates: Wide-Ranging Applications, Nasser M. Al-Qattan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mollusks grow by adding discrete growth layers throughout their lifetime (i.e., accretion). More specifically, most marine mollusks precipitate their shells in oxygen isotopic equilibrium with seawater or with a constant offset from equilibrium. The stable oxygen isotope values (δ¹⁸O) of their shells are determined by the temperature and δ¹⁸O values of the surrounding water during calcification without significant vital effects. In comparison, the stable carbon isotope values (δ¹³C) of their shells reflect those of the dissolved inorganic carbon (δ¹³C- DIC) and respired carbon dioxide. Therefore, variations in the oxygen and carbon isotope …

The Interaction Of Phylogeny And Community Structure: Linking The Community Composition And Trait Evolution Of Clades, William D. Pearse, Pierre Legendre, Pedro R. Peres-Neto, T. Jonathan Davies

Ecology Center Publications

Aim

Community phylogenetic studies use information about the evolutionary relationships of species to understand the ecological processes of community assembly. A central premise of the field is that the evolution of species maps onto ecological patterns, and phylogeny reveals something more than species traits alone about the ecological mechanisms structuring communities, such as environmental filtering, competition, and facilitation. We argue, therefore, that there is a need for better understanding and modelling of the interaction of phylogeny with species traits and community composition.

Innovation

We outline a new approach that identifies clades that are ecophylogenetically clustered or overdispersed and assesses whether …

Species-Area Model Predicting Diversity Loss In An Artificially Flooded Cave In Brazil, Rodrigo L. Ferreira, Thais G. Pellegrini

International Journal of Speleology

Subterranean environments are poorly known regarding many ecological aspects, such as community structure and its response to different disturbances. To estimate the effects of ground area lost in a limestone cave community in Southeastern Brazil, the invertebrate fauna was sampled before 76% of the cave floor was submerged by the filling of a hydroeletric power plant reservoir. Then, a 2-year monitoring was conducted. A species-area curve based on empiric data was constructed and the z-value of the species-area equation was calculated, what allowed estimating the expected cave richness after flooding comparing with data obtained during the monitoring. The results support …

Factors Affecting Nest Success Of Colonial Nesting Waterbirds In Southwest Louisiana, Karis A. Ritenour

LSU Master's Theses

As the coastline of Louisiana shifts with global climate change, subsidence, and accelerated sea level rise, important breeding islands for colonial nesting waterbirds are disappearing. In many recent studies flooding has been a leading cause of nest failure for a variety of species, especially those that nest on the ground. I examined the nest success of four species of colonial nesting waterbirds with various nesting strategies on Rabbit Island in southwestern Louisiana during 2017 and2018 by determining nest and fledging success. I monitored 855 nests, including 457 Brown Pelicans nests with an estimated hatch probability of 70%, 270 Forster’s Terns …

Tourism And African Elephant (Loxodonta Africana) Behavior In Zambezi National Park, Zimbabwe, Brigit Rooney

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

As charismatic megafauna and a flagship species, African elephants (Loxodonta africana) are vital to the African tourist economy. Conversely, high levels of wildlife tourism can induce behavioral shifts that push desired animals into less frequented areas and disrupt natural behaviors. In order to examine this trade-off, tourism levels and African elephant behaviors were studied in Zambezi National Park (ZNP) near Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Over the course of 14 weeks, in-person observations and camera traps in ZNP were used to collect geographic, demographic, and behavioral data from elephant sightings. As a proxy for human presence, geo-locational data were collected for each …