Whose Legs are in the Water? Parsing out Community Composition and Turnover Rates of Plecoptera, Trichoptera, and Ephemeroptera

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Sarah Walker and Dr. C. Riley Nelson, Department of Biology Many beta diversity indicies, like most analytical tools in ecology, abstract the known relative abundances and species presence into outputs primarily useful for obtaining p-values and little else. Therefore, the purposes of this proposed beta diversity method were to simplify currently used similarity analyses for […]

Crandall Specimen Collection Database

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Mark Valentine and Dr. Keith Crandall, Biology The goal of this project was to design and implement a database and web-based interface, to store information on the specimens collected for study in the Crandall lab. The creation of a user-friendly centralized database to warehouse the information on all of the specimens studied is anticipated to […]

A Survey of Reproductive Biology of Zenarchopterus dispar in Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam

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Tu Tran and Dr. Mark Belk, Integrative Biology Different selective environments could often predict life-history strategies (sensu Endler 1986). Resource levels of the environments strongly affect fitness and evolutionary stable strategies of species (Patrick and Pierre 1993). Similarly, predators also have a major effect on the life history of fish populations. The fish population from […]

Low-dose Alcohol Self-administration in Freely-moving Rats and its Effect on the Firing Rate of Ventral Tegmental Area GABA Neurons

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Stuart Thomas and Dr. Scott Steffensen, Neuroscience Center Each year, more and more people become the slaves of addiction to narcotics, alcohol, and nicotine. These addictions destroy families and ruin lives. The brain’s chemistry is influenced by these drugs. This study aimed to evaluate how alcohol and other drugs affect the brain’s chemistry and identify […]

Effect of Selenium on the Expression of the Androgen Receptor and Nuclear Factor Kappa-B in Human Prostate Cancer Cells

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Daniel Tandberg and Dr. Merrill J. Christensen, NDFS Department Introduction Selenium has been established as a promising chemopreventive element for prostate cancer. Several different mechanisms have been studied to delineate selenium’s anti-cancer effect, but the exact target and mechanism has yet to be clearly defined. Previous studies have established an inhibitory relationship between the nuclear […]

The Derivatives of Resveratrol and Prostate Cancer

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Dallin Snow and Dr. Merrill Christensen, Nutrition Dietetics and Food Science Introduction Resveratrol has been shown to be a very effective anticarcinogenic compound, in addition to its anti-viral, anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, and life prolonging effects. Resveratrol binds the estrogen receptor beta which in turn down regulates the androgen receptor, which is active in prostate cancer. Past […]

A Review of Hair Morphology Classification Techniques from the Past Thirty Years

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Britten Sessions and Dr. Wilford Hess, Plant and Animal Life Sciences Due to its implicit nature in species identification, hair has been studied and classified since the beginning of the 20th century. Hausman visualized enough hair characteristics and variation between mammalian species to attempt an identification system using light microscopy. His efforts in characterizing species […]

Does Predator Environment Predict Life History Traits in the Livebearing Fish Poecillia gillii?

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K. Nicole Schoonmaker and Dr. Jerald B. Johnson, Biology The process of natural selection drives the evolution of species which results in the survival of individuals whose traits are most adaptable to a specific environment and the death of individuals whose traits are less fit. Thus, populations of a single species that reside in habitats […]

Function of Novel Nuclear Variant Bone Morphogenetic Protein (nBmp2)

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Alina Schmidt and Dr. Laura C Bridgewater Bmp2 is an important growth factor that regulates many stages of development including the development of the heart, muscle, and bone. A novel nuclear variant of BMP2 was discovered before my addition to the lab and studies began to determine nBMP2’s function. Of main importance to my project […]