Browsing by Department "Biological Sciences"
Now showing items 101-120 of 301
Evolution and Speciation in North American Toads
(2023-12-04)
Understanding speciation, the evolutionary process by which new species evolve, is a central goal of evolutionary biology. Yet many important questions regarding this process remain unanswered. In this dissertation, I ...
Evolution of deuterostome immune systems
(2021-09-10)
Contemporary theory on the evolution of metazoan immune systems is primarily derived of work on a few historically established model species (including Drosophila, human, and mouse). Though these species have provided ...
The evolution of female polymorphism in a Neotropical radiation of lizards
(2010-08-04)
Color pattern polymorphism – the occurrence of multiple color patterns within populations – has provided excellent opportunities for the study of evolution. Recently, a renewed interest in polymorphism was sparked by the ...
Evolution of Flowering Time in Native North American Grapevines
(2010-05-03)
Native North American grapevines represent a significant portion of the biodiversity within the genus Vitis (Vitaceae). Previous studies of taxonomy and natural history suggested patterns of biogeography, phenology and ...
The Evolution of Live Birth and the Insulin and Insulin-like Signaling Network in Sceloporus Lizards
(2018-07-18)
Transitions to live birth have occurred in approximately 150 different vertebrate lineages, with 115 of these alone within the clade encompassing snakes and lizards. Many questions remain about how this transition occurs ...
The evolution of milk composition and lactation strategy of the Columbian ground squirrel, Urocitellus columbianus
(2012-06-19)
The evolution of parental care improved the efficiency of the reproductive process, allowing for the production of fewer offspring with a higher probability of survival. This adaptation is exemplified in the taxon named ...
Evolution of Miniaturization and Paedomorphism in Fishes of the Order Cypriniformes
(2016-08-05)
The order Cypriniformes (carps, minnows and their allies) is a morphologically diverse freshwater fish clade numbering over 4000 species. One species is the model organism zebrafish, Danio rerio. Cypriniform fishes have ...
Evolution of Pathogen-Induced Gene Expression in the House Finch, Carpodacus mexicanus
(2011-07-25)
Bacterial pathogens impact the survival, reproduction and fitness of their hosts making them extremely well-suited for experimental studies intended to understand adaptive phenotypic evolution of wild populations of ...
The Evolution of Scatterhoarding Behavior and Behavioral Adaptations of Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis)
(2023-07-16)
We investigated the evolution of scatterhoarding behavior (storing food for future use) and behavioral adaptations of eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis). First, we simulated the evolution of scatterhoarding ...
The evolution of sexual size dimorphism in squirrels
(2011-08-16)
Difference between the sizes of the sexes in a species (sexual size dimorphism SSD) is a common phenomenon, and most mammals are male-biased in size. Female-biased size dimorphism (FBSD) is uncommon in mammals. Flying ...
Evolutionary and physiological processes involved in carotenoid coloration in animals
(2018-07-18)
Colorful animal ornaments have been a core research focus of the field of sexual selection in evolutionary biology, and carotenoid-based coloration has been particularly well-studied. Animals as diverse as fish, reptiles, ...
Evolutionary Consequences of Gen(om)e Duplications in Animals
(2022-07-25)
My research interests can be broadly described as an attempt to explore the drivers of macroevolutionary processes and diversity patterns across taxa. One such driver is the contribution of gene and genome duplications. ...
Evolutionary Ecology of Loricariid Catfishes
(2022-07-25)
How extrinsic (like functional constrains and ecological interactions) and intrinsic (like modularity and integration) interactions drive diversification is a formative area of evolutionary biology. In this dissertation, ...
Evolutionary ecology of stripe-necked musk turtles (Sternotherus peltifer) in the Cahaba River drainage
(2021-04-27)
Stripe-necked musk turtles (Sternotherus peltifer) are one of the least-studied species of the southeastern United States’ diverse turtle fauna. Despite this, the environmental variation that exists within their geographic ...
An Examination of Stream Fishes at 3 Levels: Species-Area and Environmental Interactive Influences on Fish Species Richness, Stream Type Influences on Assemblage Membership, and Variation in Weight-Length Parameters by Stream Type & Fish Trait
(2016-05-05)
Obtaining an understanding of the multi-scale influences on species richness is of concern not only to theoretical development but to building an understanding of potential mechanisms of rapid species loss. To address ...
Examination of the functions of Clade III Cytokinin Response Factors in relation to Cytokinin and the Oxidative Stress Response
(2020-11-23)
Cytokinin response factors (CRFs) are a family of transcription factors belonging to the AP2/ERF transcription factor family. A subset of these CRFs have been shown to play a role in both the cytokinin (CK) signal cascade ...
Exploring the behavioral, neurological, and physiological effects of methylmercury in a model songbird
(2023-08-10)
Methylmercury is a widespread environmental stressor known to disrupt reproductive and neural function of organisms even with exposure at sublethal levels. Previous studies of its effects on physiology and behavior have ...
Exploring the role of carotenoid pigments in physiological function and color signals
(2017-04-26)
The study of carotenoid-based coloration, particularly in bird species, is a large and growing literature that is increasingly defined by the framework of a single overarching concept, the resource tradeoff hypothesis. ...
Exposure to multiple stressors in the stony coral Acropora cervicornis: Effects on photosynthesis and respiration rates
(2018-11-15)
Recreational diving is an increasingly popular ecotourism activity that has allowed unprecedented amounts of direct human interaction with coral reef communities. Inadvertent contact by divers with benthic invertebrates ...
Expression and Functional Roles of Cytokinin Response Factor Proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana
(2015-05-07)
Abstract
Cytokinin response factors (CRFs) are transcription factor proteins from the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis). CRFs comprise a small, highly conserved subgroup of the AP2/ERF family of plant ...