The Piping Plover Problem: A Review of Management Issues for a Threatened Shorebird

Andrew Lydeard and Gerry Harris The Piping Plover (Charadrius melodus) was federally listed in 1986. Since listing, Piping Plovers have been a focus of conservation and management efforts, particularly on their breeding grounds in the Northern Great Plains, Great Lakes, and northern Atlantic Coast. Despite management efforts that have resulted in range-wide population growth of the Piping Plover, growth in individual populations is often slow and reasons for this are poorly understood. A bias towards understanding drivers of declines on breeding sites compared to wintering and migratory stopover sites may be an underlying cause of this lack of understanding. Conducting studies on primarily an organism’s breeding grounds has implications that may lead to costly, ineffective management practices with little to no benefits to species conservation. We analyzed the scientific literature on Piping Plover management by systematically reviewing nine ecological journals and searching for all articles published from 1986 – 2019 including the terms “Piping Plover” and “Charadrius melodus”. The proportion of studies on Piping Plovers within their breeding range drastically outnumber those studies completed on wintering and migratory stopover sites. These seasonal sampling biases could have negative implications for Piping Plover conservation, and we suggest that research on migratory stopovers and wintering grounds should be prioritized to help reverse local population declines. Keywords: Piping Plover; Charadrius melodus; Shorebird Management; Threatened Specie

DNAReplication: a database of information and resources for the eukaryotic DNA replication community

DNAReplication (at http://www.dnareplication.net) has been set up as a freely available single resource to facilitate access to information on eukaryotic DNA replication. This database summarizes organism-sorted data on replication proteins in the categories of nomenclature, biochemical properties, motifs, interactions, modifications, structure, cell localization and expression, and general comments. Replication concepts are defined and a general model of the steps in DNA replication is presented. Links to relevant websites and homepages of replication labs are provided. The site also has an interactive section where links to recent replication papers are posted and readers are provided with the facility to post comments about each paper. The interactive and links pages are modified weekly and the whole site is updated annually

Beetle Diversity within Ecosystems; Insight of the Order Coleoptera in the Eastern Kentucky Region

Having a multitude of definitions, biodiversity can most commonly be seen as the variety and diversity of life within an ecosystem. Its relevance is crucial for species survival and resource availability; a lack of biodiversity sets an ecosystem up for failure, reducing its productivity, species richness, and increasing organismal vulnerability. Measuring biodiversity is crucial for the understanding of an ecosystem’s health, giving scientists knowledge of its stability, productivity, and persistence. This collected information can be implemented in various ways outside the scientific field as well, such as with policy decisions and legal regulations. Biodiversity is most commonly analyzed through quantitative assessment of mammal and bird species, but the relatively low numbers of species and few individuals in defined areas tend to cause flawed statistical results. Beetles, however, can be found in large numbers in just about all ecosystems. Having an immense diversity of species, they play significant roles in environments, filling ecological roles as herbivores, decomposers, predators, coprophages, fungivores, etc. As beetles are tremendously diverse and very abundant, quantitative assessments of their diversity are more statistically rigorous. We are sampling beetles from 3 sites located near Morehead, KY. Beetles were collected using pan traps and leaf litter sifting. Collected beetles were then pinned or pointed and sorted by family groups. The primary focus of the study was to determine the various beetle species and their quantitative presence within the multiple sampling sites.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2022/1013/thumbnail.jp

Preliminary Study On Beetle Biodiversity And Its Role As A Metric For Ecosystem Heterogeneity In The Rowan County Area

Biodiversity is important for maintaining ecosystem function, including the adaptation of the organisms to reflect the change in the ecological community. Many ecological roles are performed by insects, including keystone organisms, ecosystem engineers and soil modifiers, part of the food chain, general symbionts, and pollinators, and creating a cumulative database of the variety of insect types allows for an effective overview of the different aspects of the environment from which samples are collected. With approximately 400,000 described species, beetles are immensely diverse in their lifestyles and ecological roles, thus making them valuable tools in environmental assessments of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. It also means that they provide a robust set of data for metrics of biodiversity. This preliminary study focuses on ground beetles, which are important as bioindicators of habitat conditions and ecosystem heterogeneity, in Rowan County, Eastern Kentucky across three locations. Methods of quantitatively collecting samples include light traps, pitfall traps, leaf sifting, and pan traps. The primary method used in this study was leaf sifting and Berlese funnel, which is used to extract small insects and arthropods from leaf litter and other debris. Collected data are often analyzed using statistical analysis (ANOVA) that emphasizes the abundance of individuals, functional analysis that explores the diversity of different functional groups, or through various indices, including the Simpson and Shannon indices, that measure the richness and abundance of species.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2021/1032/thumbnail.jp

Beetle Diversity: A Comparison of the Biodiversity of Ecotone vs. Woods Surrounding Morehead State’s Eagle Lake

https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/student_scholarship_posters/1200/thumbnail.jp

Quantifying Ant Populations to Measure Biodiversity in Morehead, KY

To effectively conduct conservation efforts, we can use biodiversity to assess the condition of our environment. Biodiversity has been commonly defined as the variety and variability among living organisms within an area. When our ecosystems are at their best, they clean water, purify air, maintain soil, regulate climate, recycle nutrients, and provide food. Everything within an ecosystem is interdependent, so biodiversity is an important factor and indicator of environmental health. Indicators help us to measure and monitor pressures or threats in land and water use, habitat loss or invasive species, the state of species and ecosystems, the conservation response, and the benefits to people. Many different organisms have been used to assess biodiversity, such as plants, mammals, birds, butterflies, beetles, etc. Ants are a great candidate for biodiversity research, as they are found in many types of habitats, are diverse, extremely numerous, fulfill a variety of ecological roles, are sensitive to environmental change, and are conveniently easy to collect. Our most used method of collection is sorting through leaf litter. We collected leaf litter from three sites in Rowan County: Eagle Lake, Stony Cove, and Rodburn Hollow. We used Berlese funnels to extract the specimens from the litter, organized, identified, and counted them in order to analyze the biodiversity. Over the past three years we have collected almost 7,000 ants, including 18 genera. We plan to use the Shannon and Simpson indices to better evaluate alpha and beta diversity among our three study sites using ants.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2022/1030/thumbnail.jp

Quantitative Sampling Of Ant Populations In Rowan County As A Measure Of Biodiversity In Rowan County Woodlands

Biodiversity is an important metric used for conservation efforts and ecological assessments. Biodiversity is defined as the measure of taxonomic diversity within an area. Several groups of organisms have been used as surrogates to assess overall biodiversity for an area, for example plants, mammals, birds, beetles, etc. Ants represent another surrogate taxon for assessing biodiversity because ants are found in many types of habitats, fulfill a variety of ecological roles, are diverse, and are numerous. Leaf-litter samples were collected from three wooded sites in Rowan County: Eagle Lake, Stoney Cove, and Rodburn Hollow between the months of August and October in both 2019 and 2020. Ants were extracted from the leaf-litter using Berlese funnels which are used to extract arthropods from soil. The ant specimens were organized, identified, counted, and labeled to analyze the biodiversity among the different ant habitats collected. A total of 6,225 ants, and 15 genera were collected across the samples. Additionally, there are several useful indices for ant alpha and beta diversity evaluation including, Shannon and Simpson indices. The Shannon index is used to find diversity of a species or genera within a certain environment. The Simpson index is used to find proportional abundance within a given area. Alpha diversity is the diversity at one site and beta diversity is the difference in diversities between sites. The values calculated from these indices can be used to assess ant biodiversity within Rowan County.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2021/1009/thumbnail.jp

Molecular mechanisms underlying the control of antigenic variation in African trypanosomes

African trypanosomes escape the host adaptive immune response by switching their dense protective coat of Variant Surface Glycoprotein (VSG). Each cell expresses only one VSG gene at a time from a telomeric expression site (ES). The [`]pre-genomic' era saw the identification of the range of pathways involving VSG recombination in the context of mono-telomeric VSG transcription. A prominent feature of the early post-genomic era is the description of the molecular machineries involved in these processes. We describe the factors and sequences recently linked to mutually exclusive transcription and VSG recombination, and how these act in the control of the key virulence mechanism of antigenic variatio

Combining Paternally and Maternally Inherited Mitochondrial DNA for Analysis of Population Structure in Mussels

Sequence divergence for a fragment of the 16S rRNA gene was compared to identify the advantages in using mitochondrial genes that descend separately through the female and male lineages to examine population structure. The test compared divergence among four local species of freshwater mussels (Unionidae) and was extended to multiple populations of one species, Pyganodon grandis. For the same gene, the male-inherited sequences diverged at a faster rate, producing longer branch lengths in the phylogenies. Of particular use were sequences extracted from P. grandis populations from the southern region of the Lake Erie watershed (Ohio, USA); five male-inherited haplotypes were found. Only one change was observed in the female-inherited form in this region. Therefore, more rapid evolution has occurred in the male form of the gene, and this form provided stronger evidence of geographical isolation among populations. A combination of analyses on haplotypes derived through males and females creates complementary opportunities to identify evolutionary relationships caused by drift and migration in mussels