Biodiversity Commons^™

Rescuing Perishable Neuroanatomical Information From A Threatened Biodiversity Hotspot: Remote Field Methods For Brain Tissue Preservation Validated By Cytoarchitectonic Analysis, Immunohistochemistry, And X-Ray Microcomputed Tomography, Daniel Hughes, Ellen Walker, Paul Gignac, Anais Martinez, Kenichiro Negishi, Carl Lieb, Eli Greenbaum, Arshad Khan

Selected Works Temporary Series

Biodiversity hotspots, which harbor more endemic species than elsewhere on Earth, areincreasingly threatened. There is a need to accelerate collection efforts in these regionsbefore threatened or endangered species become extinct. The diverse geographical, ecological,genetic, morphological, and behavioral data generated from the on-site collection ofan individual specimen are useful for many scientific purposes. However, traditional methodsfor specimen preparation in the field do not permit researchers to retrieve neuroanatomicaldata, disregarding potentially useful data for increasing our understanding of braindiversity. These data have helped clarify brain evolution, deciphered relationships betweenstructure and function, and revealed constraints and selective pressures that provide contextabout the evolution …

Rescuing Perishable Neuroanatomical Information From A Threatened Biodiversity Hotspot: Remote Field Methods For Brain Tissue Preservation Validated By Cytoarchitectonic Analysis, Immunohistochemistry, And X-Ray Microcomputed Tomography, Hughes, Ellen Walker, Paul Gignac, Anais Martinez, Kenichiro Negishi, Carl Lieb, Eli Greenbaum, Arshad Khan

Departmental Papers (Biology)

Biodiversity hotspots, which harbor more endemic species than elsewhere on Earth, areincreasingly threatened. There is a need to accelerate collection efforts in these regionsbefore threatened or endangered species become extinct. The diverse geographical, ecological,genetic, morphological, and behavioral data generated from the on-site collection ofan individual specimen are useful for many scientific purposes. However, traditional methodsfor specimen preparation in the field do not permit researchers to retrieve neuroanatomicaldata, disregarding potentially useful data for increasing our understanding of braindiversity. These data have helped clarify brain evolution, deciphered relationships betweenstructure and function, and revealed constraints and selective pressures that provide contextabout the evolution …

Bone-Associated Gene Evolution And The Origin Of Flight In Birds, Joao P. Machado, Warren E. Johnson, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Guojie Zhang, Erich D. Jarvis, Stephen J. O'Brien, Agostinho Antunes

Biology Faculty Articles

Background

Bones have been subjected to considerable selective pressure throughout vertebrate evolution, such as occurred during the adaptations associated with the development of powered flight. Powered flight evolved independently in two extant clades of vertebrates, birds and bats. While this trait provided advantages such as in aerial foraging habits, escape from predators or long-distance travels, it also imposed great challenges, namely in the bone structure.

Results

We performed comparative genomic analyses of 89 bone-associated genes from 47 avian genomes (including 45 new), 39 mammalian, and 20 reptilian genomes, and demonstrate that birds, after correcting for multiple testing, have an almost …

Review: Living In Obscurity: Danté Fenolio – Life In The Dark., Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

The reduction and/or disappearance of phenotypic features is a biological phenomenon that has intrigued humans ever since prehistoric times. The earliest known anthropological representation of a creature showing the loss of phenotypic features dates back to ca. 22,000 YBP (Upper Paleolithic). It is a carved drawing of a wingless cave cricket, Troglophilus sp., on a bison (Bison bonasus) bone found in the Grotte des Trois Frères (Three Brothers Cave) in the central Pyrénées, France. Since then, we have witnessed how the study of organisms living in lightless environments went through a number of scientific historical periods. First was the age …

Resilient Rivers Hpr 132g, Joanna Burkhardt

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Tropical Trees As Islands: Diversity Accumulation Of Armored Scale Insects (Hemiptera: Diaspididae) On Trees As A Function Of Forest Age, Hannah Shapiro

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Armored scale insects (Hemiptera: Diaspididae) are some of the most invasive insects in the world. These cryptic plant parasites are most often encountered in managed agricultural ecosystems, but very little is known about their distribution, abundance, and diversity in tropical rainforest canopies, where they are likely to have their highest diversity. Because these ubiquitous insects are extreme generalists with undirected dispersal, their diversity (alpha and beta) accumulation can conceivably be modeled according to tenets derived from island biogeography theory. For example, one expectation is that older established trees should boast a higher species diversity and abundance than younger ones. Other …

Revelation Of Yin-Yang Balance In Microbial Cell Factories By Data Mining, Flux Modeling, And Metabolic Engineering, Gang Wu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The long-held assumption of never-ending rapid growth in biotechnology and especially in synthetic biology has been recently questioned, due to lack of substantial return of investment. One of the main reasons for failures in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering is the metabolic burdens that result in resource losses. Metabolic burden is defined as the portion of a host cells resources either energy molecules (e.g., NADH, NADPH and ATP) or carbon building blocks (e.g., amino acids) that is used to maintain the engineered components (e.g., pathways). As a result, the effectiveness of synthetic biology tools heavily dependents on cell capability to …

The Origin And Expansion Of The Eastern Red Fox, Adrienne Egge Kasprowicz

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

When new populations are first identified in a region there are multiple potential sources: introduction of a non-native species, extra-range expansion of a nearby population, or demographic growth of a previously unnoticed species. Red foxes were absent or rare in the mid-eastern portion United States until the late 1800s. Their origins potentially include natural population increase/expansion, translocations from Europe, and, eventually, 20th century fur farming. In this study I attempt to identify the relative impact of native expansion versus human mediated introductions of both colonial era European foxes and early 20^th century fur-farm foxes on the establishment of red …

Sensory Modalities Underlying The Escape Response Of The Cricket, Acheta Domesticus, To Looming Stimuli, Ariel M. Childs

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

In order to prevent injury or capture by a predator, animals have evolved escape behavior. Despite offering a more realistic, multimodal, approximation of an approaching predator, looming stimuli have rarely been used to evoke escape behavior in crickets. Wind stimuli, however, have been used on a variety of insects, including crickets where it has been found that direction of escape is directly correlated to the angle of incoming wind stimuli. Wind stimuli are detected by sensilla trichodea, small filiform hairs covering the cerci of crickets, locusts and cockroaches. Despite having other complex sensory systems, such as antennae and vision, …

Plastic Pollution And The Global Throwaway Culture: Environmental Injustices Of Single-Use Plastic, Kristin L. Mcdermott

ENV 434 Environmental Justice

The global throwaway culture has created a cross-ecosystem plastic pollution injustice. The first to suffer this injustice will be the most vulnerable. Our oceans have become our dumpsters. The throwaway culture has created a disrespect of material goods that has turned the earth’s resources into rubbish after a single use. Eighty percent of the yearly 8 million tons of plastic that enter the ocean is single use plastic, such as plastic bottles, plastic shopping bags, or cigarette lighters.[1] Plastic has destroyed ecosystems, robbing impoverished communities of natural resources and of a healthy and safe living environment. First to suffer …

Hydroelectric Dams: The Lao Government's Luxury Trap, M.K. Laurel

ENV 434 Environmental Justice

The research of the Lao government, its hydroelectric dams, and its responses to its project was done through an environmental justice lens. It is an interdisciplinary research that explores the political corruption, the role of media, and the environment in order to frame the Lao government and the reasoning behind their unjust activities.

The Impacts Of Elephant Grazing On Plant Succession In Tropical Forests Of Africa, Nadia Swit

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Succession occurs in an ecosystem when there is a change in the species structure and diversity in an ecological community over time. While this can allow for greater biodiversity, occasionally diversity can be stunted based on the level of disturbance and the invasiveness of the first pioneering species. As in the case of arrested succession, continual disturbance prohibits changes in the environment and suppresses species establishment. The effects of this continued disturbance are seen in the tropical forests in national parks in Uganda and Tanzania in Eastern Africa with African elephants (Loxodonta africana). The continuous browsing on trees …

Estimated Effects Of Climate Change On The Reproductive Fitness Of The Northern Spotted Owl, Strix Occidentalis Caurina, Nadia Swit

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

In this paper, the trends for current and future climate change were utilized to evaluate the potential reproductive success of the Spotted Owl, particularly the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) subspecies. As breeding season would exert additional stressors on the animal, a time period of five months, from January to June, was selected for the spring breeding season in which to evaluate temperature change. Previous research performed by Weathers and colleagues (2001) concerning the California Owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) formulated a thermodynamic equation that was utilized to compare the metabolic rate of the owl at …

The Ecological Impacts Of Non-Native Species On River Otter Populations, Nadia Swit

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Most nonindigenous species invasions can have negative consequences on an environment. Trophic systems may become altered as prey sources are depleted, which can have further implications on community and habitat structure. However, some species invasions can be positive as it can provide another food source for key stone species. The effects of invasive species are reviewed in the following paper for the North American river otter (Lontra canadensis) and the Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra). In the case of the North American river, the introduction of the lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) has negatively impacted otter …

The Influence Of Beached Harmful Algal Blooms On Terrestrial Arthropods On The Shore Of Lake Erie, Nadejda Mirochnitchenko, Kevin E. Mccluney

Honors Projects

Marine primary inputs, such as sea wrack and algae, offer a great niche for insects and other animals to exploit. The existence of a similar niche on the coast of lakes has received less attention. To complicate matters, many freshwater systems are seeing increases in proliferation of toxic and non-toxic cyanobacteria blooms. This study examined patterns in lake shore terrestrial arthropod abundance, diversity, and community composition across gradients of beached algae, with varying toxicity. We detected water microcystin effects on arthropod richness in survey three, beached material effects on Shannon’s Diversity in survey two, and water microcystin effects on the …

Changes In Floristic Composition In The State Forests In Worcester County (Massachusetts) Over 34 Years, Flor A. Monroe

Sustainability and Social Justice

ABSTRACT

CHANGES IN FOREST DIVERSITY OF STATE FOREST IN WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS, OVER 34 YEARS PERIOD

The forest in Massachusetts has changed since the earliest colonial settlement and today the floristic composition is more homogeneous. This study investigates the potential change in the floristic composition over thirty years in Worcester County State Forests. Shannon, richness and evenness indices for two periods were compared, and Jaccard index was used to analyze similarity in composition between the periods. The possible influence of severe weather events was also analyzed.

It was found Changes in the floristic composition, but the magnitude of the changes …

Summer 2015 Gis Analyst Internship At The Connecticut Department Of Energy & Environmental Protection, Old Lyme, Connecticut, Stuart R. Deland

Sustainability and Social Justice

I worked as the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Internee for the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) from May 18, 2015 through August 14th of the same year. I was stationed at the Old Lyme Field office and worked under the direct supervision of Deb Pacileo, my boss and GIS analyst for CT DEEP. My function in the agency was similar to my supervisor's as I had no single project that dominated my time, but was given a multitude of projects to create, edit, oversee, and produce. Some of these project included editing python scripts of former …

Relationships Between Nutrients, Periphyton Abundance, And Benthic Macroinvertebrate Scrapers In Ozark Highland Streams, Harrison Smith

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

We collected samples from seven Arkansas streams during the months of August 2014 and February 2015 with the objective of determining possible relationships between nutrients, periphyton abundance and benthic macroinvertebrates. We hypothesized that periphyton would be positively associated with nutrients, and that increases in periphyton biomass would increase the abundance and diversity of benthic scraper families. Samples were collected from three transects at each site. The periphyton was analyzed for carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and ash free dry mass and Chl-a content. Macroinvertebrates families belonging to the feeding group of grazers/scrapers were compared with water column and periphyton nutrient concentrations, as …

Cover Crop Mixture Diversity And Function, Angela Florence

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of cover crop mixture diversity on cover crop function. Specifically, this study evaluated the effect of cover crop species and functional richness on aboveground biomass productivity, weed suppression, soil nutrient retention, soil microbial community characteristics, and performance stability. Twenty to forty cover crop treatments were replicated three to four times at eleven sites across southeastern Nebraska using a pool of eighteen species representing three cover crop species each from six pre-defined functional groups: cool-season grasses, cool-season legumes, cool-season brassicas, warm-season grasses, warm-season legumes, and warm-season broadleaves. Each species was planted …

Vascular Flora Of The Possum Walk Trail At The Infinity Science Center, Hancock County, Mississippi, Hanna M. Miller

Honors Theses

The North American Coastal Plain contains some of the highest plant diversity in the temperate world. However, most of the region has remained unstudied, resulting in a lack of knowledge about the unique plant communities present there. This flora catalogues the vascular plant species along the Possum Walk Trail on the southeast corner of the Infinity Science Center in Hancock County, Mississippi. Additionally, interpretive signs have been developed to display information about engaging species and phenomena to increase public interest in native plant life and involve them conservation efforts. The site was surveyed from spring of 2015 to spring of …