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Articles 2791 - 2820 of 19752

Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Assessing The Health And Behavioral Effects Of Turtle Racing On Eastern Box Turtles (Terrapene Carolina), Michelle K. Weaver Apr 2023

Assessing The Health And Behavioral Effects Of Turtle Racing On Eastern Box Turtles (Terrapene Carolina), Michelle K. Weaver

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Turtle racing involves the public capturing largely wild-caught box turtles (Terrapene spp.) and racing them at standalone events or at races incorporated into larger family events (e.g., festivals). These turtle races are legal in most states because of a lack of regulations and/or funding to enforce regulations that may exist. Moreover, we lack information on the potential effects (e.g., disease transmission, survival, movements, and general health) of races on the turtles that could help support the implementation of regulations. Our objective was to understand the short-term and long-term health and behavioral effects of turtle races on eastern box turtles (Terrapene …

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Endophytic Fungi And Their Competitive Hierarchy And Effects Of Changing Environmental Nitrogen., Haley G. Bryant, Kylea R. Garces Apr 2023

Endophytic Fungi And Their Competitive Hierarchy And Effects Of Changing Environmental Nitrogen., Haley G. Bryant, Kylea R. Garces

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Endophytes are fungi that live symbiotically within the roots of plants. These fungi can serve different functions within the roots, and are thought to form a competitive hierarchy that allows them to coexist. It is not well established how specific species act within this endophytic dynamic, especially with each other. This experiment looked to better understand these relationships through Grime’s C-S-R model; growing the extracted fungal species in different treatments: control, stress, low nitrogen, high nitrogen, and comparing each growth rate and biomass over a two-week period. The species looked at in this study were extracted from dominant dune-building grass …

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A Novel Approach To Scoring Rhythmic Variation In Evolving White-Throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia Albicolis) Songs, Taylor Hiers Apr 2023

A Novel Approach To Scoring Rhythmic Variation In Evolving White-Throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia Albicolis) Songs, Taylor Hiers

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Studies show that the White-throated Sparrow's (Zonotrichia albicolis) song is evolving across North America. Previously, most songs ended in a series of "triplets" consisting of three notes. Sometime after the 1960s, a new variant arose in western Canada that ended in a series of "doublets" consisting of two notes. A recent study found that the doublet variant has since spread rapidly eastward across the continent, replacing the triplet variant. We set out to document this shift in southwest Missouri, which is part of the sparrow's wintering range. We found that triplets were significantly more common than doublets, indicating …

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Late Cretaceous Marine Vertebrates From The Tarrant Formation, Tarrant County, Texas U.S.A, Aaron Johnson, Kenshu Shimada Apr 2023

Late Cretaceous Marine Vertebrates From The Tarrant Formation, Tarrant County, Texas U.S.A, Aaron Johnson, Kenshu Shimada

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

The Tarrant Formation (middle Cenomanian: ca. 96 million years ago) is a stratigraphic member of the Upper Cretaceous Eagle Ford Group in Texas, U.S.A., and consists of calcareous sandstone formed near the East Texas Embayment of the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, an epicontinental seaway in North America. We examined vertebrate fossils from the Tarrant Formation based on specimens collected through surface collecting and bulk sampling from three localities in Tarrant County, Texas, including the type locality of a pachyrhizodontid fish, Polcynichthys lloydhilli. Our preliminary examination shows that the fossil fauna includes shark species such as Ptychodus anonymous, Archaeolamna sp., …

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Habitiat Structure And Ecomorphology Of Fishes In Neotropical Blackwater Creeks., Devya Hemraj-Naraine Apr 2023

Habitiat Structure And Ecomorphology Of Fishes In Neotropical Blackwater Creeks., Devya Hemraj-Naraine

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Freshwater ecosystems provide habitat for a diversity of aquatic flora and fauna. However, anthropogenic activities like mining and pollution alters aquatic habitats and the ecosystem services they provide. In South America, which hosts one quarter of all freshwater fish species, aquatic habitats are under considerable encroachment from human development. We surveyed nine blackwater creeks tributary to the Demarara River along a major Highway in Guyana to determine whether fish morphology and community structure correlate with habitat characteristics among sites with different degrees of human impact. Twenty-three morphological traits were measured on 3-5 adult specimens of each species. The most abundant …

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Pollinators And Flowering Resources In Louisville Urban Green Spaces, Sarah Hobbs Apr 2023

Pollinators And Flowering Resources In Louisville Urban Green Spaces, Sarah Hobbs

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Urban Greenspaces can appear in many different forms such as parks, urban orchards, and community gardens. These spaces provide important ecosystem services such as enhanced biodiversity, improved soil health, and increased carbon sequestration. Greenspaces such as parks and community gardens have been relatively well studied in the last few decades compared to urban orchards, despite the multitude of ecosystem services that can be provided or enhanced by these orchards. We hypothesize that urban orchards will provide the optimal conditions for pollinator communities because urban orchards normally have the greatest variety of vegetation and flowering resources, which is positively correlated with …

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Herbarium Records Reveal Sex-Specific Effects Of Climate Warming On Phenology Of Fragaria Virginiana, Ethan R. Richardson Apr 2023

Herbarium Records Reveal Sex-Specific Effects Of Climate Warming On Phenology Of Fragaria Virginiana, Ethan R. Richardson

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Plant populations tend to be hermaphroditic, but in some cases can diverge into a dioecious sexual system, or one that possesses both male and female members. Prior studies show a correlation between sex systems evolution such as these and ecological variables. These variables impose challenges on plants' ability to propagate and in a dioecious population, males and females have been seen to respond differently to different environmental contexts. What is still being studied is the degree to which biogeography contributes to the sexual differentiation of dioecious species. While evidence supports the idea of a latitudinal gradient contributing to sexual differentiation, …

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How Accurately Structure Can Identify Hybrids When Comparing Different Numbers Of Species And Marker Types And Numbers, Chloe Hendrikse Apr 2023

How Accurately Structure Can Identify Hybrids When Comparing Different Numbers Of Species And Marker Types And Numbers, Chloe Hendrikse

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Hybridization is a common problem in conservation. It can be difficult to identify hybrid individuals but doing so is often necessary in order to make conservation recommendations. For example, botanical gardens and seed banks want to identify if individuals are hybrids of two or more species to determine if offspring could be used for conservation or restoration, and to analyze the risk of possible extinction via introgression. Our project looks at how well the program STRUCTURE can detect and cluster hybrids, their parent species, and other pure species, which we created using simulations. We build on past studies, which typically …

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Functional Implications Reflected In Neurocranial Morphology Of Lamniform Sharks (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes), Jake J. Wood Apr 2023

Functional Implications Reflected In Neurocranial Morphology Of Lamniform Sharks (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes), Jake J. Wood

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Lamniform sharks (Elasmobranchii: Lamniformes) display diverse habitat preferences and lifestyles. Based on museum specimens and published illustrations, we examined the proportion of the anteroposterior length of the rostral, olfactory, optic, and otic regions with respect to the neurocranial length in each lamniform species as a proxy of relative importance of each sensory region (electroreception, olfaction, vision, and ‘coordination’) to its lifestyle. We show that: 1) Carcharias and Megachasma (ragged-tooth and megamouth) have short rostral and large otic regions indicative of slower-swimming pelagic lifestyles with elevated coordination for balancing in the water column; 2) Alopias pelagicus, A. vulpinus, …

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Leaf Litter Arthropod Communities Not Responsive To Nutrient Pulse Subsidies, Andrew R. Seiler, Stephen P. Yanoviak Apr 2023

Leaf Litter Arthropod Communities Not Responsive To Nutrient Pulse Subsidies, Andrew R. Seiler, Stephen P. Yanoviak

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Spatial subsidies are the asymmetric movement of resources from a donor habitat to a distinct recipient habitat. Arthropod rain, i.e., the fall of arthropods from tree crowns to the forest understory, is a potentially important subsidy link between canopy food webs and detritus-based litter food webs. We added homogenized fragments of Blaptica dubia cockroaches in high (12g m-2) and low (2g m-2) concentrations to replicated quadrats of leaf litter as a pulse subsidy in a temperate forest. Controls were: 1) zero subsidy and 2) addition of foam pellets in place of cockroach fragments. Litter in each quadrat was subsampled 2, …

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Sexual Selection, Female Body Size, And Fecundity In Drosophila Melanogaster, Calvin Herrick Apr 2023

Sexual Selection, Female Body Size, And Fecundity In Drosophila Melanogaster, Calvin Herrick

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

In Drosophila melanogaster it is well established that male sexual preference emphasizes high fecundity in females and females with larger body sizes. It is hypothesized that male preference for large females is due to a positive correlation between body size and fecundity. Here, we take advantage of a long-running experiment, where lineages of flies were made significantly larger (L-lineages) and smaller (S-lineages) during 400+ generations of artificial selection. In the first part of this study, we measured female Drosophila fecundity, based only on differences in evolved size and found substantial differences in fecundity. In the second part of this study, …

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Habitat Characteristics And Winter Use Of Woodpecker-Excavated Tree Cavities, Adrianna Yoder Apr 2023

Habitat Characteristics And Winter Use Of Woodpecker-Excavated Tree Cavities, Adrianna Yoder

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Avifauna are in decline in North America, including red-headed woodpeckers (Melanerpes erythrocephalus). Red-headed woodpeckers are negatively impacted by urbanization, which has decreased their ideal habitats of oak-savannas and through the management of urban trees there has been a reduction in the amount of tree decay, a necessary feature of suitable trees that woodpeckers can make cavities in. Cavities are created and used as nests in the breeding season (spring/summer) and as roost-sites in the non-breeding season (fall/winter). In the Chicagoland region, during the fall some red-headed woodpeckers migrate while others do not and remain overwinter, making them facultative …

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Air Pollution Is Associated With Increased Stress In Urban Songbirds, Reagan Earlywine Apr 2023

Air Pollution Is Associated With Increased Stress In Urban Songbirds, Reagan Earlywine

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Air pollution has been suggested to be a major driver of decline in native bird populations. Understanding how air pollution affects avian physiology and how air pollution exposure may be reduced may help develop effective conservation solutions. Here we tested whether elevated air pollution exposure was associated with increased physiological stress response in free-living urban American robins, and whether urban vegetation mitigated this effect. Specifically, we asked whether the concentration of the stress-related glucocorticoid hormone corticosterone was predicted by exposure to two metrics of air pollution: nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ultrafine particulates (UFPs); and two metrics of green …

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Recognition Of Conspecifics Under Elevated Turbidity, Ryan L. Gaynor Apr 2023

Recognition Of Conspecifics Under Elevated Turbidity, Ryan L. Gaynor

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

A key component of sociality is the ability of individuals to collect relevant social information about groupmates. Human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC) can interfere with the collection of accurate social information by altering organisms’ sensory environment. In aquatic ecosystems anthropogenic disturbances can often cause an increase in water turbidity, thereby altering the visual environment of a body of water. This change to the sensory environment can degrade or obscure visual information used by individuals to mediate social behavior and recognize conspecifics. Neolamprologus pulcher is a cooperatively breeding cichlid that lives in small groups and utilize a variety of visual cues …

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Spider Web Morphology Is Associated With Damage By Falling Woody Debris, Abigail Nienaber Apr 2023

Spider Web Morphology Is Associated With Damage By Falling Woody Debris, Abigail Nienaber

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Web-building spiders are important predators in most terrestrial habitats. Web damage is common and presents potential fitness consequences for the spider. Falling woody debris is likely a major source of web damage for forest-dwelling spiders, especially Leucauge venusta, a widespread species that builds horizontal webs. We quantified damage area, general dimensions, and spatial orientation of L. venusta webs in two Kentucky forests. We also measured woody debris fall from the canopy. We experimentally damaged webs with falling debris in the lab to test the hypothesis that L. venusta change their web orientation following disturbance. The relative area of webs …

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Microplastics In Western Ny River Ecosystems, Eliana Deglopper, Jonathan O'Brien Apr 2023

Microplastics In Western Ny River Ecosystems, Eliana Deglopper, Jonathan O'Brien

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

The occurrence of microplastics in marine and freshwater systems has been an area of increasing concern due to its potential negative impact on aquatic organisms and human health. With continuously growing patches of plastics in oceans and the Great Lakes, we must understand the mechanisms that move these materials from the urban landscape into aquatic ecosystems. We investigated the transport and storage of microplastics in 5 streams draining into Lake Erie from Buffalo, NY. The streams were sampled from 2020-2023 to determine the amount of plastic being transported. Samples underwent chemical digestion, filtration, and staining with Nile Red, and were …

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Qtl Analysis Of Body Size And Development Time In Dendroctonus Ponderosae, Camille M. Pushman Apr 2023

Qtl Analysis Of Body Size And Development Time In Dendroctonus Ponderosae, Camille M. Pushman

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

The mountain pine beetle (MPB, Dendroctonus ponderosae) is a pest species found in western Norh America that attacks and kills Pinus host trees. Previous studies have identified genetic divergence between populations and variation in life-history traits (body size and development time) that are likely important in local adaptation. To understand the underlying genetic architecture of MPB adaptation and divergence, we performed an F1 intercross between two distinct populations (Utah & Arizona) and performed a QTL analysis. We analyzed double digest RAD sequencing data from 181 F2 individuals. Our final dataset consists of 986 SNPs and we were able to …

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Amphipod Cage Match: Competition Between Hyalella Azteca And Gammarus Spp. Is Mediated By Resource Availability, Dominic Degeorge, Jonathan O'Brien Apr 2023

Amphipod Cage Match: Competition Between Hyalella Azteca And Gammarus Spp. Is Mediated By Resource Availability, Dominic Degeorge, Jonathan O'Brien

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Ecological competition is seen throughout the environment, but effects of competition may be complex for generalist consumers with broader niche requirements. We observed Hyalella azteca and Gammarus spp. in the same and separate mesocosms to determine their levels of coexistence and resource use. Starting populations of ten Hyalella and Gammarus were added to ten mesocosms with a single species present as well as both species to an additional ten mesocosms. For each of these ten mesocosms in the three treatments, five were supplied one gram of leaf matter and five were supplied with five grams of leaf matter. After six …

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Rubbish Habit Or Novel Habitat? Colonization Of Anthropogenic Litter By Stream Invertebrates, Lanie Masset, Jonathan O'Brien Apr 2023

Rubbish Habit Or Novel Habitat? Colonization Of Anthropogenic Litter By Stream Invertebrates, Lanie Masset, Jonathan O'Brien

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

We conducted a field experiment to examine the colonization and use of human derived materials by aquatic invertebrates in three western New York streams. The study streams included two soft-bottomed urban streams, Ransom Creek and California Creek, and a hard-bottomed forested stream, Hayes Hollow Creek. In each stream, four different substrate types of similar surface areas: rocks, glass bottles, plastic bottles, and bricks were placed and left in the streams for 6 weeks to promote invertebrate colonization. Baskets filled with both rock and leaf substrates were also placed in the streams for 6 weeks to measure background community composition. The …

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Repeatability And Distribution Of Behavior Types Over Time And Across Populations In Free-Ranging Adult And Juvenile Ornate Box Turtles (Terrapene Ornata), Abigail Trautman Apr 2023

Repeatability And Distribution Of Behavior Types Over Time And Across Populations In Free-Ranging Adult And Juvenile Ornate Box Turtles (Terrapene Ornata), Abigail Trautman

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

As studies continue to investigate inter-individual variation, it is becoming increasingly evident that individual animals have their own unique behavior type (personality; repeatable behaviors over time and context) that persists throughout their life. Behavior is simply different forms of motion, and a behavior type influences which motions (behaviors) are most likely to be on display. Behavioral types can influence resource acquisition, predation risk, and mating opportunities and thus can directly influence the fitness of any given individual. In this study, we examine the behavior types of free-ranging adult ornate box turtles (Terrapene ornata), including their repeatability and variation …

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A Preliminary Assessment Of Microplastic Pollution In A Local Watershed Of Cincinnati, Ohio, Prior To Reservoir Dredging., Rachel G. Bickett, Gwyneth A. Hagerty, Caroline R. Menosky, Clayton A. Strege Apr 2023

A Preliminary Assessment Of Microplastic Pollution In A Local Watershed Of Cincinnati, Ohio, Prior To Reservoir Dredging., Rachel G. Bickett, Gwyneth A. Hagerty, Caroline R. Menosky, Clayton A. Strege

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Microplastics, defined as small particles of plastic between 2 and 5 µm, are a pressing environmental concern due to the growing use of plastic products and subsequent disposal. While most microplastic research has focused on marine systems, a growing concern exists on the presence of microplastics in freshwater systems and additional impacts to humans and wildlife. The main objective of this preliminary study was to assess the prevalence of microplastics in water surrounding a dammed reservoir. These results will provide baseline data to assess the role of dam dredging on microplastics. Samples were taken from Sharon Woods Park, Cincinnati, Ohio, …

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Relationship Between Learning And Bt In Ornate Box Turtles (Terrapene Ornata), Brianna M. Wilson Apr 2023

Relationship Between Learning And Bt In Ornate Box Turtles (Terrapene Ornata), Brianna M. Wilson

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Cognition is important to the individual animal and can help determine its role and impact on its ecological niche. Variation in cognition may influence the way animals interact with their environment and their performance in certain behaviors such as resource acquisition, range philopatry, and navigation. The question has been raised as to whether cognitive styles such as fast-slow or speed-accuracy types share a relationship with behavioral type. Animal personality (behavioral type) is made up of five axes: boldness, aggression, sociality, activity, and exploration. In this study, we investigate learning in a western Nebraska population of ornate box turtles (Terrapene …

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Effect Of Functional Trait Variation On Bee Body Temperature, Gabriella A. Muller Apr 2023

Effect Of Functional Trait Variation On Bee Body Temperature, Gabriella A. Muller

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Bees are both ecologically and economically important pollinators for maintaining agricultural production and the health of many diverse ecosystems. As our world continues to change, bee diversity and population numbers are declining due to increasing temperatures. Functional traits such as body size and coloration can mediate the effects of such harsh thermal conditions on insect performance. Specifically, bee body size can significantly impact thermal parameters, with larger bees gaining and losing heat more slowly than smaller bees due to higher surface area to volume ratios. To obtain a better understanding of these relationships, we studied the variation in body temperature …

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Variation In Synthetic Floral Microbiome Composition Is Largely Ignored By Foraging Bumblebees, Nevin P. Cullen Apr 2023

Variation In Synthetic Floral Microbiome Composition Is Largely Ignored By Foraging Bumblebees, Nevin P. Cullen

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Most flowers are occupied by diverse communities of microbes, which can alter floral attractiveness to key pollinators and floral fitness by interacting with floral traits. Different species of flower often acquire unique communities of microbes. Consequently, pollinators are frequently forced to choose between two flowers with distinct floral microbiomes while foraging. However, it is currently unknown whether pollinators have an inherent preference for flowers containing one floral microbiome over another, and whether microbial preference is modified by variation in floral traits. We investigated this knowledge gap using distinct bacteria and yeasts cultured from a nickel-hyperaccumulating plant and its non-accumulating relative. …

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Convergent Evolution Of Antifreeze Proteins In Two Insect Families Supported By Whole Genome And Gene Family Loci Analyses, Shaw Kagawa Apr 2023

Convergent Evolution Of Antifreeze Proteins In Two Insect Families Supported By Whole Genome And Gene Family Loci Analyses, Shaw Kagawa

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Various Coleoptera (beetles) and Lepidoptera (moths) insects are known to produce highly active antifreeze peptides (AFPs), an adaptive trait that enabled them to avoid freezing and survive severe winters. These include the grain pest Tenebrio molitor (yellow mealworm), pine-boring Rhagium beetles, the fire-colored Dendroides beetles, a stag beetle, and the Choristoneura spruce budworms (moths). Insect AFPs are small peptides of ~8 to 15 kDa, consisting of several tandem 13-amino acid repeats of similar sequences, each ending with a conserved tripeptide Thr-Cys/aa-Thr motif, found to be important for ice binding. Except for the eastern spruce budworm, the evolutionary origin/s and process/es …

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Quantifying The Relationship Between Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi And A Native And Invasive Thistle, Nicole Baker, Lucia Vera, Ian Rosales Apr 2023

Quantifying The Relationship Between Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi And A Native And Invasive Thistle, Nicole Baker, Lucia Vera, Ian Rosales

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) associate with 80% of vascular plant roots and are an important part of nutrient exchange. Our research quantified the relationship between (AMF) and native Pasture Thistle (Cirsium discolor) and invasive Canada Thistle (Cirsium arvense). We hypothesized that Pasture Thistle would have a stronger relationship with AMF than Canada Thistle because of the degraded mutualism hypothesis, which states that invasive species have reduced relationships with AMF. For our experiment, we grew inoculated and non-inoculated plants at 10 different levels of soil phosphorus concentrations. Pasture Thistle and Canada Thistle were both facultatively dependent upon …

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An Optimal Patch Use Model For Nitrogen Foraging In Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, Xin Lin Apr 2023

An Optimal Patch Use Model For Nitrogen Foraging In Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, Xin Lin

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Optimal Foraging Theory has been widely used to study animal foraging behaviors, but has seldom been applied to symbiotic microbes like arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. To date we know little about how AM fungi make decisions to forage in different nutrient patches. To help address this gap we here apply Optimal Foraging Theory to understand how AM fungi forage for nitrogen. We focus on nitrogen because AM fungi need more nitrogen than their plant hosts and soil nitrogen availability can shift the relationship between AM fungi and their hosts from mutualism to parasitism. We present a stochastic dynamic programming model …

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Forest Recruitment Dynamics Within The Southern Boreal-Temperate Ecotone, Kiley M. Chernicky Apr 2023

Forest Recruitment Dynamics Within The Southern Boreal-Temperate Ecotone, Kiley M. Chernicky

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Understanding how global climate change will alter future forest composition is especially challenging in forest communities where tree species have long co-occurred, but their competitive balance may be altered due to changes in climate. Of particular concern with increasing global temperatures are boreal forest communities that lie on the southern boreal-temperate forest ecotone, where the boreal forest is particularly vulnerable. The aim of my research is to investigate shifts in recruitment dynamics due to climate change near the southern range limit of two historically co-occurring boreal forest conifer species, white spruce (Picea glauca) and balsam fir (Abies …

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Spatiotemporal Patterns Of Ticks And Tick-Borne Disease Dynamics At Neon Sites Across A Sub-Continental Scale., Ana Sofia Rivera Apr 2023

Spatiotemporal Patterns Of Ticks And Tick-Borne Disease Dynamics At Neon Sites Across A Sub-Continental Scale., Ana Sofia Rivera

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

At local scales, dynamics of ticks and tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease are driven by resource pulses, such as mast seeding in forest trees, that creates increases in tick hosts. Tick-borne diseases in humans have nearly doubled between 1940 and 2004 and understanding the dynamics of infectious diseases has long been of interest for ecologists. The family Ixodidae is the most capable of transmitting pathogens to humans and tick-borne diseases are the most common vector of illness in the United States. The objective of this research is to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of ticks and tick-borne diseases, which may …

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Effect Of Variable Canopy Cover On Floral Visitation, Toby Shaya Apr 2023

Effect Of Variable Canopy Cover On Floral Visitation, Toby Shaya

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

Pollinators provide essential services for ecosystem function. Studies aimed at understanding how availability of floral resources impacts pollinators find that canopy cover impacts bees indirectly by affecting the amount of floral resources in the forest understory and directly by changing the thermal environment in which they can thermoregulate. As ectotherms the maintenance of bee body temperature depends on the distribution of patches of sun and shade throughout a landscape, which can be dependent on canopy cover. The goals of this study were to understand how variable canopy cover drives floral visitation patterns in oak savanna found in the Oak Openings …

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