Living life on the edge: The role of introduction and range expansion in shaping behavior of a non-native spider

Animal personalities describe the behavioral phenotypes of individuals that often remain relatively stable over time and contexts. Since they can account for differential dispersal tendencies, understanding how personality types are distributed across the range can lead to important characterization of expanding invasive populations. Cyrtophora citricola is a colonial tentweb orbweaver spider with an Old World native range that is invasive in Florida. It has experienced a range expansion of over 450 km in 20 years. In my dissertation, I asked whether C. citricola exhibits personality, whether some of its behavioral traits are correlated with dispersal tendencies, and whether personality types are spatially assorted across its range. I found that this spider species does indeed exhibit personality through repeatability in various behavioral traits, and that activity and exploration behaviors were correlated with the latency to engage in ballooning long distance dispersal. I have also shown that individuals at the core of the established population behaviorally differ from those at the two expanding range fronts, although these two populations seem to have diverged in traits. Individuals at the leading edge of their invasive front are faster to attack a prey stimulus and more active. Those in the western population are shyer and less exploratory. These differences suggest that any landscape level range expansion processes such as spatial sorting do not always result in similar patterns of phenotypic divergence from the core population. I also compared behavioral types of native populations of C. citricola in their native range with those in their invasive Florida range, to better determine whether invasive populations are subject to different pressures and processes than those in the native range. In the native range, range was not a significant predictor of behavior, although individual size, site, and colony were. This is consistent with the idea that composition and spatial distribution of native populations might be shaped by local adaptation, whereas expanding introduced population might be influenced by dispersal-influenced phenotypic change. Overall, personality composition at the core of the non-native range resembled that of the native population. This dissertation suggests that personality shifts across the non-native range may be more of a product of range expansion processes, rather than selective pressures from the introduction and establishment process

Decision Support For Demand Response Triggers: Methodology Development and Proof of Concept Demonstration

Project Final Report prepared for CIEE and California Energy Commissio

Capacity payments and the pricing of reliability in competitive generation markets

In restructured electric power industries around the world, power pool designers have enabled generators to earn revenues consisting of energy and capacity payments. This paper discusses uses and abuses of capacity payments, and links provision of these payments to the issue of pricing reliability. A general formula for determining the ideal capacity price in a generation supply system is presented and the theoretical basis discussed. Methods of achieving an ideal level of system reliability through price-setting of capacity payments (in more regulated markets) and through price discovery (in more competitive markets) are contrasted. The paper concludes with market design recommendations that could better realize customer preference for reliability at prices customers are willing to pay.published_or_final_versio

Two hymenopteran egg sac associates of the tent-web orbweaving spider, Cyrtophora citricola (Forskål, 1775) (Araneae, Araneidae)

We report the discovery of two wasp species emerging from egg sacs of the spider Cyrtophora citricola (Forskål 1775) collected from mainland Spain and the Canary Islands. We identify one as Philolema palanichamyi (Narendran 1984) (Hymenoptera, Eurytomidae) and the other as a member of the Pediobius pyrgo (Walker 1839) species group (Hymenoptera, Eulophidae). This is the first report of Philolema in Europe, and the first documentation of hymenopteran egg predators of C. citricola. The latter finding is particularly relevant, given the multiple invasive populations of C. citricola in the Americas and the Caribbean, where neither egg sac predation nor parasitism is known to occur. We describe rates of emergence by Ph. palanichamyi from spider egg sacs collected from the southern coast of Spain and estimate sex ratios and body size variation among males and females. We also re-describe Ph. palanichamyi based on the female holotype and male paratype specimens

The clustering of Galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey : including covariance matrix errors

JP acknowledges support from the UK Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) through the consolidated grant ST/K0090X/1 and from the European Research Council through the ‘Starting Independent Research’ grant 202686, MDEPUGS. AGS acknowledges support from the Trans-regional Collaborative Research Centre TR33 ‘The Dark Universe’ of the German Research Foundation (DFG).We present improved methodology for including covariance matrices in the error budget of Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) galaxy clustering measurements, revisiting Data Release 9 (DR9) analyses, and describing a method that is used in DR10/11 analyses presented in companion papers. The precise analysis method adopted is becoming increasingly important, due to the precision that BOSS can now reach: even using as many as 600 mock catalogues to estimate covariance of two-point clustering measurements can still lead to an increase in the errors of ∼20 per cent, depending on how the cosmological parameters of interest are measured. In this paper, we extend previous work on this contribution to the error budget, deriving formulae for errors measured by integrating over the likelihood, and to the distribution of recovered best-fitting parameters fitting the simulations also used to estimate the covariance matrix. Both are situations that previous analyses of BOSS have considered. We apply the formulae derived to baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) and redshift-space distortion (RSD) measurements from BOSS in our companion papers. To further aid these analyses, we consider the optimum number of bins to use for two-point measurements using the monopole power spectrum or correlation function for BAO, and the monopole and quadrupole moments of the correlation function for anisotropic-BAO and RSD measurements.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Design, Protocol and Baseline Data of Nurturing Healthy Teachers, a Cluster Non-Randomized Controlled Trial to Improve the Health, Well-Being, and Food Security of Preschool and Elementary School Teachers in Houston, Texas

BACKGROUND: We present the conceptual framework, design, and study measures of Nurturing Healthy Teachers, a quasi-experimental study to examine the short- and long-term effectiveness of the Nurturing Healthy Teachers (NHT) nutrition intervention on food insecurity, dietary behaviors, mental health and cardiometabolic health among preschool and elementary school teachers. METHODS: A convenience sample of 28 elementary schools with pre-kindergarten and elementary classrooms were recruited in Houston, Texas. Nurturing Healthy Teacher intervention includes Brighter Bites, an evidence-based coordinated school health program that combines access to fresh produce and nutrition education, and Create Healthy Futures, a web-based nutrition education program that targets nutrition knowledge, self-efficacy, mindfulness, and social support to create healthy habits among teachers. The primary outcome is food insecurity. Secondary outcomes include diet quality, mental health, and cardiometabolic health. Metabolic markers and skin carotenoid levels were assessed using in-person assessments, while all other measures were obtained via questionnaire. RESULTS: At baseline, most of the participants were female, 63 % identified as Hispanic, were highly educated, and had a mean age of 42.6 years. Overall, 50 % of teachers were classified as being obese and 20 % had high cholesterol. At baseline teachers had a mean HbA1c (%) of 5.6 %. Moderate to severe depression was experienced by 18 % of teachers and 23 % of teachers experienced moderate to severe anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study will inform next steps towards future implementation and evaluation of teacher-focused interventions