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Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

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Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Other Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health

Acute Effects Of The Psychoactive Pollutant Fluoxetine On The Antipredator Behavior Of The Gulf Killifish (Fundulus Grandis), Semyra Reus May 2026

Acute Effects Of The Psychoactive Pollutant Fluoxetine On The Antipredator Behavior Of The Gulf Killifish (Fundulus Grandis), Semyra Reus

Honors Theses

Pharmaceutical contaminants are increasingly prevalent in aquatic environments, yet their sublethal effects on ecologically relevant behaviors remain poorly understood, particularly in estuarine systems. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as fluoxetine, are of particular concern due to the conserved role of serotonin in regulating behavior across vertebrates. Here, we investigated how acute exposure to environmentally relevant concentrations of fluoxetine influences anti-predator behavior in Gulf killifish (Fundulus grandis), a key estuarine fish commonly found in saltmarsh habitats. Killifish were exposed to control (0 ng/L), low (17.8 ng/L), and high (596 ng/L) fluoxetine concentrations and subsequently tested in the presence …


Neonicotinoid Bioaccumulation In Bluegill And Bullhead Within Lake Julia And Lake Zumwalde, Jake Stuber Jan 2026

Neonicotinoid Bioaccumulation In Bluegill And Bullhead Within Lake Julia And Lake Zumwalde, Jake Stuber

Journal of Earth and Life Science

Brown Bullhead Ameiurus nebulosus, Yellow Bullhead Ameiurus natalis, and Bluegill Lepomis macrochirus are unique in their stark differences. Bullhead are scaleless bottom feeders that can tolerate high pollution and low O2 conditions. In contrast, Bluegill are scaled, aggressive nesters and are less tolerant of high pollutants or low-oxygen conditions. Among these pollutants include a class of chemicals called neonicotinoids (hereafter referred to as neonics). Neonics are a class of insecticides primarily used within agriculture and pest management. Due to the effectiveness, application has escalated on a global scale. They have been well documented by many toxicology assessments. …


Impact Of Unconventional Gas Extraction On Tributaries Of Tenmile Creek, Greene County, Pennsylvania: A 12-Year Perspective, Christian L. Beall May 2025

Impact Of Unconventional Gas Extraction On Tributaries Of Tenmile Creek, Greene County, Pennsylvania: A 12-Year Perspective, Christian L. Beall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Much of southwestern Pennsylvania has been central to a rapid increase in development for unconventional natural gas extraction in the past two decades. The continued monitoring of streams over their lifetime as extraction sites is pivotal to understanding the effects of fracking on local waterways and their ability to provide for wildlife and human use. Here, using multiple indices of biotic integrity (IBI), I perform analyses of fish and macroinvertebrate communities as well as water chemistry on two streams, Bates Fork (with shale wells) and Fonner Run (without), as part of a follow-up to work performed there from 2010-2012. Fish …


The Effectiveness Of The Minnesota Buffer Law And Its Impacts On People, Ellen P. Isakson Jan 2025

The Effectiveness Of The Minnesota Buffer Law And Its Impacts On People, Ellen P. Isakson

Journal of Earth and Life Science

In January 2015, the then-governor of Minnesota Mark Dayton announced new legislation that would require 50-foot vegetation buffers along all waterways in Minnesota; this legislation would come to be known as the Minnesota buffer law, exact requirements being “perennial vegetative buffers of up to 50 feet along lakes, rivers, and streams and buffers of 16.5 feet along ditches” (Albert, 2017; MN Board of Water and Soil Resources [MN BWSR] 4 ). A buffer in the context of vegetation and natural resource management is a strip of vegetation around a body of water “designed to intercept stormwater runoff and minimize soil …


Investigating The Acute Physiological Effects Of Effluent Crystal Violet On The Freshwater Bioindicator Daphnia Pulex, Hoang K. Ho Dec 2024

Investigating The Acute Physiological Effects Of Effluent Crystal Violet On The Freshwater Bioindicator Daphnia Pulex, Hoang K. Ho

2024 Fall Honors Capstone Projects - Archive

This study examines the effects of acute exposure to crystal violet (CV) on the freshwater zooplankton Daphnia pulex in response to growing concerns over synthetic dyes from industrial runoff in aquatic ecosystems. The primary objective is to assess CV's impact on D. pulex's heart rate, mobility, morphology, and lethality via a series of acute exposure tests. 48-h acute toxicity (0-2000 μg/L), 48-h immobilization (0-180 μg/L), and 9-h heart rate (0-2,000 μg/L) tests were conducted using third-generation daphnids, followed by stereomicroscopic examination and statistical analysis. Results showed increasing mortality and decreasing mobility and heart rate with increasing CV concentration; the …


Ketamine Slows Microinvertebrate Movement: Ecotoxicological Implications, Joy Bowling, Felicity Kelsch, Emma Welsh, Sophia Willis, Kathyrn Morris Apr 2023

Ketamine Slows Microinvertebrate Movement: Ecotoxicological Implications, Joy Bowling, Felicity Kelsch, Emma Welsh, Sophia Willis, Kathyrn Morris

2023 Midwest Ecology & Evolution Conference

With the new release of medications incorporating ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic, there is an ecotoxicology concern due to the presence of ketamine in local environments. Tardigrades, microscopic organisms commonly known as water bears, possess the same NDMA receptor that ketamine targets in humans, allowing for potential adverse reactions in exposure to ketamine. Our goal was to determine if tardigrade movement slowed under ketamine exposure over time. Tardigrade (Hypsibius exemplaris) velocity was measured using imaging software to record their response to increasing concentrations of the dissociative anesthetic. With higher concentrations, the tardigrades displayed a slower velocity. This indication of …


The Effect Of Seasonality On Yellow Perch Ecology And Ecotoxicology Within Lake Manganese, Bailey Duxbury Jan 2020

The Effect Of Seasonality On Yellow Perch Ecology And Ecotoxicology Within Lake Manganese, Bailey Duxbury

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Seasonality is a consistent component of aquatic ecosystems yet most fish biological and ecotoxicological studies commonly employ field sampling protocols focused during the warm open water season with minimal emphasis placed on winter sampling, especially for north-temperate latitude ecosystems. Such strategies limit our understanding of poikilotherm biology and ecology during the overwintering seasons. Here, I investigated seasonal changes in yellow perch (Perca flavescens) biology, ecology and ecotoxicology over a one-year period in Lake Manganese. Significant seasonality was observed for metrics including fish energy densities (kJ/g), gonadosomatic indices, whole-body lipid contents, and carbon stable isotope values (δ13C). …


Macrophytes And Atrazine In Ponds Of Southwest Missouri, Christine Michelle Cornish Aug 2018

Macrophytes And Atrazine In Ponds Of Southwest Missouri, Christine Michelle Cornish

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Wetlands are often the ultimate destination of agrochemicals. The increased use of these pollutants has resulted in their increased transport, via runoff and spray drift, into wetlands. Atrazine, a commonly used herbicide, has been detected in surface water, groundwater, soil, and sediment, and has shown to have adverse impacts on aquatic biota, such as fish and amphibians. Few studies have reported on the relationships between atrazine and macrophytes. I measured atrazine concentrations in surface sediments in agricultural, conservation, and golf course ponds of southwest Missouri, and investigated how those concentrations might be related to macrophyte communities, and pond environmental characteristics. …


Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender May 2018

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …


Organizational Effects Of Defeminizing Toxicants: Lessons Learned From An Environmental Sentinel Organism, The Fathead Minnow., Jonathan Ali Dec 2017

Organizational Effects Of Defeminizing Toxicants: Lessons Learned From An Environmental Sentinel Organism, The Fathead Minnow., Jonathan Ali

Theses & Dissertations

Endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) are chemicals that interfere with hormone function and are increasingly detected in aquatic environments, where they elicit adverse effects from exposed organisms. The toxicological effects of EDCs can be described as either activational (reversible) or organizational (irreversible), where the latter are associated with adverse outcomes in reproductive performance of adult fish. However, few studies have investigated the organizational impacts of anti-estrogenic or “defeminizing” EDCs, e.g. agrichemicals or pharmacological agents, in an environmentally-relevant or “sentinel” species. The objective of this study was to investigate the impacts of early-life EDC-initiated changes in estrogenic gene expression on organizational effects …


The Effects That Liquid And Solid Cattle Manure Have On The Water Quality Of Drainage Ditches In Putnam County, Ohio, Janelle Horstman Jan 2014

The Effects That Liquid And Solid Cattle Manure Have On The Water Quality Of Drainage Ditches In Putnam County, Ohio, Janelle Horstman

Honors Projects

Lake Erie has experienced harmful algal blooms with increased frequency since the mid-1990s due to excess nutrients from Rivers, such as the Maumee River, and largely agricultural watersheds. Nonpoint source pollution from agriculture contributes to eutrophication, algal blooms, and the degradation of water quality. This creates stress on aquatic fauna, reduced aesthetic quality, odor, and limits of the water for usage of drinking, recreation, and industry. This research paper asks what the contributions of having access to manure application records, soil records, and information about antibiotics have on what is known about manure management and antibiotic resistance, which has been …


West Coast Rock Lobster Fishery Ecological Risk Assessment 20 February 2013, Department Of Fisheries Sep 2013

West Coast Rock Lobster Fishery Ecological Risk Assessment 20 February 2013, Department Of Fisheries

Fisheries Occasional Publications

No abstract provided.


Generation Of Intracellular Reactive Oxygen Species And Genotoxicity Effect To Exposure Of Nanosized Polyamidoamine (Pamam) Dendrimers In Plhc-1 Cells In Vitro, Hugh Byrne, Pratap Naha Jan 2013

Generation Of Intracellular Reactive Oxygen Species And Genotoxicity Effect To Exposure Of Nanosized Polyamidoamine (Pamam) Dendrimers In Plhc-1 Cells In Vitro, Hugh Byrne, Pratap Naha

Articles

Polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers elicit systematically variable cyto- and eco-toxic responses, promising the basis for structure activity relationships governing nanotoxicological responses. Increased production of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS), genotoxicity and apoptosis due to in-vitro exposure of hepatocellular carcinoma cells to dendrimer generations G-4, G-5 and G-6 is demonstrated. A generation dependent increase in ROS and genotoxicity was observed, consistent with our previous studies. The responses correlate well with the number of surface amino groups per generation. Although ROS production initially increases approximately linearly, it saturates at higher doses. Notably, normalised to molar dose of surface amino groups, the dose-dependent ROS …


The Amphipod Orchomenella Pinguis — A Potential Bioindicator For Contamination In The Arctic, Lis Bach, Valery E. Forbes, Ingela Dahllöf Jan 2009

The Amphipod Orchomenella Pinguis — A Potential Bioindicator For Contamination In The Arctic, Lis Bach, Valery E. Forbes, Ingela Dahllöf

Valery Forbes Publications

Indigenous organisms can be used as bioindicators for effects of contaminants, but no such bioindicator has been established for Arctic areas. Orchomenella pinguis is a benthic amphipod, ubiquitous in the Arctic and can be found in high numbers. We collected O. pinguis at sites with different contamination levels. Population characteristics (body length distribution, average dry weight and amphipod organic content) were related to sediment contaminant concentrations, in order to identify suitable endpoints for using this species as a bioindicator. We show that O. pinguis was prevalent in both clean and contaminated areas, easy to sample and that its population characteristics …