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Full-Text Articles in Population Biology

Evaluating Non-Invasive Environmental Methods For Detecting Tropical African Pangolin Species To Inform Conservation Actions, Ichu Godwill Ichu Aug 2022

Evaluating Non-Invasive Environmental Methods For Detecting Tropical African Pangolin Species To Inform Conservation Actions, Ichu Godwill Ichu

Theses and Dissertations

Tropical African pangolin species are threatened throughout their range due to habitat loss and illegal take. Limited knowledge on distribution has rendered conservation efforts challenging. Methods commonly used for other wildlife species need to be tested for each pangolin species as each has variable ecologies requiring specific detection and monitoring techniques. This thesis evaluates the efficacy of two non-invasive environmental methods for detecting tropical African pangolin species, and consists of two complementary studies; a proof of concept study using soil sourced eDNA from a white-bellied pangolin enclosure in the Columbus Zoo, Ohio, to detect the species, and a field study …


Migration Ecology Of American White Pelicans: Circannual Movement, Geographic Range, And Annual Survival, Ryo Ogawa May 2022

Migration Ecology Of American White Pelicans: Circannual Movement, Geographic Range, And Annual Survival, Ryo Ogawa

Theses and Dissertations

Responses of migratory birds to seasonal climate and long-term environmental changes have been a central theme of avian migration ecology. Atmospheric conditions (e.g., winds and thermals), climate, and land cover and land use (LCLU) are major factors influencing the flights of soaring birds. Soaring American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) (hereafter, AWPEs) migrate between the subtropical Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and the temperate Northern Great Plains. American White Pelicans are also economically important piscivorous birds, causing enormous damages to the commercial Channel Catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) aquaculture in the Southeastern US. My studies aimed to evaluate the effects …


Evaluating Population Genetic Structure And Potential Genomic Signals Of Natural Selection In A Migratory Songbird (Protonotaria Citrea), Tyler A. Hohenstein Jan 2022

Evaluating Population Genetic Structure And Potential Genomic Signals Of Natural Selection In A Migratory Songbird (Protonotaria Citrea), Tyler A. Hohenstein

Theses and Dissertations

In this study I attempted to further resolve the population genetic structure in the Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea), and conducted an outlier SNP analysis and exploratory gene ontology analysis to investigate potential ongoing natural selection in the species. This analysis of population structure confirms previous work by DeSaix et al. (2019), where weak population structure was observed between eastern sites along the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and western sites in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley, possibly due to a genetic discontinuity across the Appalachian Mountains. I conducted two forms of outlier SNP analyses, a principal component analysis (PCA)-based approach to identify SNPs …