Light plays an important role in ecological processes in the ocean both day and night. While relatively inexpensive, off the shelf instruments are available to measure Photosynthetically Active Radiation or PAR during the day, efforts to quantify light levels at night have proven more difficult. The goal of this work...
The objectives of this investigation were to examine the changes in vegetation resulting from application of herbicides, and to study the effects of these vegetative changes on the abundance and composition of small-mammal populations, and on deer usage of treated and untreated plots. Three areas in western Oregon were selected...
With a growing emphasis on details of behavior comes an increasing
need for knowledge of natural behavior patterns. Studies
on the life history of Peromyscus maniculatus have long been available
in the literature. More recently, investigators have turned to
analyzing the behavior of some of the subspecies of P.m. in...
Behavior of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) toward people was
studied by examining hikers' reports of grizzly bear observations
and by intensively observing grizzlies in an area of Glacier National
Park that was heavily used by day-hikers. Of concern were the apparent
habituation of grizzly bears to people in the study...
Workers in colonies of European honey bees Apis mellifera L. clean their
nestmate's body by allogrooming behavior. This behavior may be initiated by
either grooming dancers or by the allogroomers themselves. The first occurs
less frequently (ca. 17 %) than the later (83 %). By using the inner edge of...
Callistoma costatum and Tegula funebralis, marine intertidal
snails from low and high littoral zones respectively, were exposed to
air for two, six and twelve hour periods, during which time their
oxygen consumption rates were measured. The animals were then
immersed in sea water and their respiration rates recorded for a...
A multidisciplinary western Beaufort Sea Ecological Cruise
(WEBSEC) was conducted from August 15 to September 20, 1971.
During the cruise, one hundred ninety-nine 0.1 m² Smith-McIntyre
grabs samples were taken at forty stations located on the continental
shelf and slope of the western Beaufort Sea. The Gammaridean
Amphipoda and Cumacea...
The 36 samples collected with a 22-foot semi-balloon shrimp
trawl at depths from 40 to 1,829 meters off the central coast of
Oregon between July 1961 and June 1962 provided preliminary data
on the distribution, species composition, and associations of benthic
fishes with respect to depth and sediment type.
Sixty-seven...
This investigation examined the community structure of two intertidal sedimentary environments on the Oregon coast in terms of species composition and vertical distribution.
A coring device was used to obtain samples from two levels above MLLW in each beach on four occasions. Of the 54 taxa found, 46.2% were crustaceans,...
Samples of benthic organisms off the coast of Oregon, taken
from depths varying from 50 to 2900 meters, have been analyzed in
terms of diversity at a given station, and similarity and ecological
distance to other stations. Estimates of epifauna abundance were
also made. In the analysis an important distinction...
In January-February 1971 five replicate 0.07 m² Van Veen grabs
were obtained from each of 12 stations in Arthur Harbor and nine Van
Veen grabs were obtained from two stations in nearby Bismark Strait.
The 69 grab samples yielded 78,395 individuals which were separated
into 282 taxa, including 108 species...
Interest in the distribution of Clostridium botulinum type E
was heightened by the sudden outbreak of human botulism from
smoked whitefish chubs and canned tuna fish in 1963. The question
arose as to how widely the organism is distributed among fish
and shellfish in the Northwest and what potential hazard...
The effects of Marine protected areas (MPAs) on adult fish populations depend on the degree of protection provided, which is partly a function of MPA size and the spatial extent of fish movements. The Redfish Rocks Marine Reserve (RRMR) and MPA, located on the south coast of Oregon near Port...
Early theoretical models for the evolution of male-female
pairing were based largely on studies of birds. These models
assumed that biparental care of eggs and young was an
essential component of pairing. However, male-female pairing
is also a relatively common social system in coral-reef
fishes, and biparental care of young...
To assess the context dependence of kin discriminating
behavior, I examined kin-biased aggregation behavior in tadpoles
of R. cascadae in different ecological conditions. I manipulated food
distribution, predator presence, thermal heterogeneity, and
relatedness in a multifactorial mesocosm experiment. All four
factors interacted to influence tadpole dispersion. My results
suggest that...
Movement in an important component of an animal’s life cycle when it relies on both aquatic and terrestrial habitats. When multiple species overlap in the use of these habitats, they rely on other methods to reduce competition for shared resources. This dataset measured the jumping performance and movement behavior of...
Efficient foraging strategies result in a predator spatially overlapping with its prey, foraging in the most profitable patches, and minimizing the time transiting between patches. Previous studies investigating baleen whale foraging strategies have generally focused on investigating spatial overlap with prey patches, patch profitability or movement within feeding grounds. The...
Salamander courtship coordinates the exchange of gametes. Plethodontids have evolved an elaborate means by which this is done. Throughout the family Plethodontidae a tail-straddling walk is performed to orchestrate the transfer of sperm. Typically this behavior is linear, however in the genus Aneides there are exceptions. In the genus Aneides...
Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) are a widely distributed baleen whale species, well known for their diverse acoustic behavior. On high-latitude foraging grounds, humpback whales produce a suite of non-song vocalizations (“calls”) in concert with foraging and social behavior. In this dissertation I investigated the role of calls in the acoustic...
The Nearshore Assessment Tool for Alaska: Southeast (NATAK-SE) is a standardized protocol for rapidly assessing the habitat and functions of a particular marine or estuarine shore segment (intertidal zone and immediately adjoining upland) anywhere in Southeast Alaska. It consists of data forms and a spreadsheet. It has a Rapid component...
The data is a JSON format file containing the position, velocity, and fish identifier data for 300 golden shiners in a shallow (depth of 4.5 to 5 cm) rectangular water tank (2.1 by 1.2 meters). There are 5000 individual frames (samples of position and velocity) corresponding to video taken at...
These datasets document observations of pronghorn crossing structures in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem between 2011 and 2014. These datasets include information about the probability of pronghorn crossing the structures and their behaviors around the structures themselves (e.g., sustained vigilance, stress).
In animals, reproductive behaviors serve to attract individuals together during the
breeding season and to coordinate the behavioral and physiological states of individuals
so that mating can successfully occur. In snakes, the various reproductive behaviors
including courtship, mating, courtship inhibition, male combat and trailing are mediated
primarily by pheromones. Pheromones...
My dissertation focuses on the evolutionary forces that have shaped the chemical signaling system of plethodontid salamanders. Pheromones mediate two phases of plethodontid reproduction: mate attraction prior to courtship and female persuasion during courtship. Substrate-borne chemical signals are believed to play an important role in mate attraction for these animals....
Darwin devised the evolutionary theory of sexual selection to account for the manifold extravagances of courtship behaviors and displays. Mating interactions represent a major evolutionary process driving the elaboration, vibrancy, and peculiarity of these courtship traits. For my dissertation research, I strived to elucidate the dynamics that constitute the complex...
There is considerable evidence to support the
hypothesis that seafood, poultry and meat are close
substitutes in consumer demand. Thus the relationships
among prices are important in determining consumption
patterns among these protein sources. In addition, there
are at least two kinds of outlets in which seafood, poultry
and meat...
Group foraging is observed in many species as a means to increase the ability of members of the group to find and exploit patchy prey. Group foraging can be exhibited in a number of different contexts based on the relationships between the participants, including by-product mutualism. One variant of by-product...
The present study explored the effects of intranasal oxytocin (OT), a naturally occurring hormone, on the behavior of pet dogs in an attachment test. Each dog participated in two testing sessions. On one visit saline was administered nasally and on another OT was administered nasally. Condition order was counterbalanced. Following...
Interspecific predation and cannibalism and associated rates of oviposition were
assessed for adult female Metaseiulus occidentalis (Nesbitt) and Typhlodromus pyri
Scheuten when provided non-limiting amounts of either eggs, larvae, protonymphs, or
deutonymphs. Tests with all four stages of phytoseiids and larvae of Tetranychus urticae
Koch were carried out at 25°C....
This thesis describes studies that investigated 1)
the effects of courtship on the neuroendocrine system of
female rough-skinned newts, Taricha granulosa, and 2)
whether the observed courtship-induced neuroendocrine
changes affected female sexual receptivity.
Sexual behaviors of female T. granulosa changed
dramatically during courtship. Initially, females
exhibited unreceptive behaviors to a...
Managing rangelands with livestock grazing is a tool that can be applied to obtain vegetation management objectives. Animals utilize available resources, which vary in quantity and quality, across the landscape. Their movements are adjusted to the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of resource distribution. Controlling livestock distribution is fundamental to economically...
Patterns of nest attendance behavior by breeding birds represent a parent-offspring trade-off in which adults balance self-maintenance with parental care decisions.
Incubation, in particular, is of interest because adults must provide an environment
suitable for embryonic development through nest-building and contact-incubation.
We evaluated how adult incubation constancy and nest visitation...
Postcopulatory sexual selection—sperm competition and cryptic female choice—has become a major area of research over the past 40 years. Within this field there are many outstanding questions at every level of analysis, from proximate to ultimate. The fitness consequences for both sexes in the period after copulation and before fertilization...
Aquatic ecological investigation is expanding to encompass considerations of
multiple scales across large landscapes. Much of the analysis included in this work
focuses specifically on coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in multiple subbasins on
the Oregon coast. Coho salmon were chosen for an investigation of spatial scales,
network connections, and life...
Human activities have altered Earth’s ecosystems. Most biomes have experienced a 20-50% conversion to human use. Loss of habitat has obvious effects on the persistence of species. Fragmentation, however, may also negatively affect biodiversity for those species that exhibit behavioral responses to changes in habitat configuration. Such behavioral changes include...
Sexual selection can influence the mating system of an organism through multiple mechanisms. These mechanisms result in variation in reproductive success among individuals, and include scramble competition, endurance rivalries, contests, mate choice and cryptic choice, and sperm competition. Understanding the mating system of a species requires the identification of which...
An experiment was designed to determine the effects of a poured rubber flooring substrate on the behavior of captive Asian elephants. Additionally, room utilization was evaluated in a series of seven rooms used for indoor housing. These seven rooms were divided into two observation areas, the Front observation area which...
Pacific harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) are one of Oregon’s most common coastal predators, numbering between 10,000 and 12,000 individuals (Brown et al. 2005b). They consume more than 149 species or types of marine prey within the Pacific Northwest, which include a large variety of commercially important fisheries species. Despite...