Matching Items (100)
136686-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Collective decision making in social organism societies involves a large network of communication systems. Studying the processes behind the transmission of information allows for greater understanding of the decision making capabilities of a group. For Temnothorax rugatulus colonies, information is commonly spread in the form of tandem running, a linear

Collective decision making in social organism societies involves a large network of communication systems. Studying the processes behind the transmission of information allows for greater understanding of the decision making capabilities of a group. For Temnothorax rugatulus colonies, information is commonly spread in the form of tandem running, a linear recruitment pattern where a leading ant uses a short-ranged pheromone to direct a following ant to a target location (in tandem).The observed phenomenon of reverse tandem running (RTR), where a follower is lead from a target back to the home nest, has not been as extensively studied as forward tandem running and transportation recruitment activities. This study seeks to explain a potential reason for the presence of the RTR behavior; more specifically, the study explores the idea that reverse tandem run followers are being shown a specific route to the home nest by a highly experienced and efficient leading ant. Ten colonies had migrations induced experimentally in order to generate some reverse tandem running activity. Once an RTR has been observed, the follower and leader were studied for behavior and their pathways were analyzed. It was seen that while RTR paths were quite efficient (1.4x a straight line distance), followers did not experience a statistically significant improvement in their pathways between the home and target nests (based on total distance traveled) when compared to similar non-RTR ants. Further, RTR leading ants were no more efficient than other non-RTR ants. It was observed that some followers began recruiting after completion of an RTR, but the number than changed their behavior was not significant. Thus, the results of this experiment cannot conclusively show that RTR followers are utilizing reverse tandem runs to improve their routes between the home and target nests.
ContributorsColling, Blake David (Author) / Pratt, Stephen (Thesis director) / Liebig, Juergen (Committee member) / Sasaki, Takao (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-12
136790-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Communication amongst eusocial insect is key to their success. Ants rely on signaling to mediate many different functions within a colony such as policing and nest mate recognition. Camponotus floridanus uses chemosensory signaling in the form of cuticular hydrocarbons to regulate these functions. Each cuticular hydrocarbon profile contains numerous hydrocarbons,

Communication amongst eusocial insect is key to their success. Ants rely on signaling to mediate many different functions within a colony such as policing and nest mate recognition. Camponotus floridanus uses chemosensory signaling in the form of cuticular hydrocarbons to regulate these functions. Each cuticular hydrocarbon profile contains numerous hydrocarbons, however it is yet to be seen if Camponotus floridanus can discriminate between linear hydrocarbons of similar length. Individual specimens were conditioned in three different ways: 5 conditioning with high concentration of sugar water (1;1 ratio), 1 conditioning with high concentration of sugar water, and 5 conditioning with low concentration of sugar water (1;4). Two linear hydrocarbons were use, C23 and C24, with C23 always being the conditioned stimulus. Specimens who were conditioned 5 times with high concentration of sugar water were the only group to show a significant response to the conditioned stimulus with a p-value of .008 and exhibited discrimination behavior 46% of the time. When compared 5 conditioning with high concentration to the other two testing conditioning groups, 1 conditioning with high concentration produced an insignificant p-value of .13 was obtained whereas when comparing it with 5 conditioning low concentration of sugar a significant p-value of .0132 was obtained. This indiciates that Camponotus floridanus are capable of discrimination however must be conditioned with high concentration of sugar water, while number of conditioning is insignificant.
ContributorsDamari, Ben Aviv (Author) / Liebig, Juergen (Thesis director) / Ghaninia, Majid (Committee member) / Pratt, Stephen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-05
136797-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) play a crucial role in social insect recognition systems. In this study we investigated mate choice in the red harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus. In Phoenix, this species has two lineages, J1 and J2, which look identical, but are genetically isolated. In the genetic caste determination (GCD) system

Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) play a crucial role in social insect recognition systems. In this study we investigated mate choice in the red harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus. In Phoenix, this species has two lineages, J1 and J2, which look identical, but are genetically isolated. In the genetic caste determination (GCD) system workers and queens are determined by their genotype (i.e., workers develop from interlineage crosses, queens from intralineage crosses). As such, J1 and J2 lineages are dependent on each other in order for colonies to produce both workers and reproductive queens. Given their genetic isolation and interdependence, we hypothesized that the CHCs of alate males and queens are affected by lineage, and that differences in the CHC profile are used for mate recognition. We tested these hypotheses by analyzing the lineage distributions of actively mating pairs (n=65), and compared them with the overall distribution of male and female sexuals (n=180). We additionally analyzed the five most abundant CHC compounds for 20 of the actively mating P. barbatus alate male and queen pairs to determine how variable the two lineages are between each sex. We found that mating pair distributions did not significantly differ from those expected under a random mating system (�2= 1.4349, P= 0.6973), however, CHC profiles did differ between J1 and J2 lineages and sexes for the five most abundant CHC compounds. Our results show that random mating is taking place in this population, however given the differences observed in CHC profiles, mate recognition could be taking place.
ContributorsTula Del Moral Testai, Pedro Rafael (Co-author) / Cash, Elizabeth (Co-author) / Gadau, Juergen (Thesis director) / Liebig, Juergen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-05
137047-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Evolutionary theory predicts that animal behavior is generally governed by decision rules (heuristics) which adhere to ecological rationality: the tendency to make decisions that maximize fitness in most situations the animal encounters. However, the particular heuristics used by ant colonies of the genus Temnothorax and their propensity towards ecological rationality

Evolutionary theory predicts that animal behavior is generally governed by decision rules (heuristics) which adhere to ecological rationality: the tendency to make decisions that maximize fitness in most situations the animal encounters. However, the particular heuristics used by ant colonies of the genus Temnothorax and their propensity towards ecological rationality are up for debate. These ants are adept at choosing a nest site, making a collective decision based on complex interactions between the many individual choices made by workers. Colonies will migrate between nests either upon the destruction of their current home or the discovery of a sufficiently superior nest. This study offers a descriptive analysis of the heuristics potentially used in nest-site decision-making. Colonies were offered a choice of nests characterized by the Ebbinghaus Illusion: a perceptual illusion which effectively causes the viewer to perceive a circle as larger when it is surrounded by small circles than when that same circle is surrounded by large circles. Colonies were separated into two conditions: in one, they were given the option to move to a high-quality nest surrounded by poor-quality nests, and in the other they were given the option to move to a high-quality nest surrounded by medium-quality nests. The colonies in the poor condition were found to be more likely to move to the good nest than were colonies in the medium condition at a statistically significant level. That is, they responded to the Ebbinghaus Effect in the way that is normally expected. This result was discussed in terms of its implications for the ecological rationality of the nest-site choice behavior of these ants.
ContributorsTalken, Lucas Warren (Author) / Pratt, Stephen (Thesis director) / Sasaki, Takao (Committee member) / Liebig, Juergen (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor)
Created2014-05
137273-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Protein AMPylation is a recently discovered and relatively unstudied post-translational modification (PTM). AMPylation has previously been shown to play an important role in metabolic regulation and host pathogenesis in bacteria, but the recent identification of potential AMPylators across many species in every domain of life has supported the possibility that

Protein AMPylation is a recently discovered and relatively unstudied post-translational modification (PTM). AMPylation has previously been shown to play an important role in metabolic regulation and host pathogenesis in bacteria, but the recent identification of potential AMPylators across many species in every domain of life has supported the possibility that AMPylation could be a more fundamental and physiologically significant regulatory PTM. For the first time, we characterized the auto-AMPylation capability of the human protein SOS1 through in vitro AMPylation experiments using full-length protein and whole-domain truncation mutants. We found that SOS1 can become AMPylated at a tyrosine residue possibly within the Cdc25 domain of the protein, the Dbl homology domain is vital for efficient auto-AMPylation activity, and the C-terminal proline-rich domain exhibits a complex regulatory function. The proline-rich domain alone also appears to be capable of catalyzing a separate, unidentified covalent self-modification using a fluorescent ATP analogue. Finally, SOS1 was shown to be capable of catalyzing the AMPylation of two endogenous human protein substrates: a ubiquitous, unidentified protein of ~49kDa and another breast-cancer specific, unidentified protein of ~28kDa.
ContributorsOber-Reynolds, Benjamin John (Author) / LaBaer, Joshua (Thesis director) / Borges, Chad (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2014-05
136377-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
In this thesis, glycan nodes, the basic subunits of complex biological sugars, were studied to determine the reproducibility of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) based methylation analysis of whole blood plasma by normalization using an internal standard of heavy permethylated glycans. Glycans are complex biological sugars that have a variety of

In this thesis, glycan nodes, the basic subunits of complex biological sugars, were studied to determine the reproducibility of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS) based methylation analysis of whole blood plasma by normalization using an internal standard of heavy permethylated glycans. Glycans are complex biological sugars that have a variety of applications in the human body and will display aberrant compositions when produced by cancerous cells. Thus an assay to determine their composition can be used as a diagnostic tool. It was shown that the assay may have potential use, but needs further refinement to become an improvement over current methods by analyzing the results of ratio-determination and replicate experiments.
ContributorsMiyasaki, Tyler Takeo (Author) / Borges, Chad (Thesis director) / Van Horn, Wade (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2015-05
136226-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Western diets, high in dietary fat and red meat, are associated with hyperglycemia and weight gain, symptoms that promote insulin resistance and diabetes. Previous studies have shown that elevated glucose promotes glycation of circulating proteins such as albumin, which is thought to lead to hyperglycemia complications. It was hypothesized that

Western diets, high in dietary fat and red meat, are associated with hyperglycemia and weight gain, symptoms that promote insulin resistance and diabetes. Previous studies have shown that elevated glucose promotes glycation of circulating proteins such as albumin, which is thought to lead to hyperglycemia complications. It was hypothesized that diets with no meat consumption (pesco-vegetarian and lacto-vegetarian) would reduce protein glycation, in comparison to a diet with meat. Forty six healthy adult omnivorous subjects were randomized into one of three groups and instructed to either consume red meat (i.e. meat) or poultry twice per day (control), eliminate meat and increase fish consumption (pesco-vegetarian), or adopt a vegetarian diet devoid of fish, meat or poultry (lacto-vegetarian) for four weeks. Fasting plasma samples were collected from participants at baseline and after 4 weeks of the dietary intervention. Plasma glucose concentrations were measured using a commercially available kit. Percent glycated albumin was measured on a separate aliquot of plasma by mass spectrometry. Plasma glucose concentrations were significantly increased following 4-weeks of pesco-vegetarian diet (P=0.002, paired t-test). Neither the lacto-vegetarian (P=0.898) or the control diet (P=0.233) affected plasma glucose concentrations. Despite the significant increase in plasma glucose following a pesco-vegetarian diet, no change in percent glycated albumin was observed (P>0.50, ANOVA). These findings may indicate a protective effect of the pesco-vegetarian diet on protein glycation in the presence of elevated plasma glucose and suggest the need for additional studies to examine the link between increased fish consumption and glucose regulation.
ContributorsRaad, Noor (Author) / Sweazea, Karen (Thesis director, Committee member) / Borges, Chad (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
147692-Thumbnail Image.png
Description

Much is still unknown about dominance hierarchies. Many different species form dominance hierarchies and each species have very different ways of forming these hierarchies. Some engage in various different dominance interactions to establish a dominant position. This experiment aims to use the ant species, Harpegnathos saltator, as a model to

Much is still unknown about dominance hierarchies. Many different species form dominance hierarchies and each species have very different ways of forming these hierarchies. Some engage in various different dominance interactions to establish a dominant position. This experiment aims to use the ant species, Harpegnathos saltator, as a model to explore what sets dominant individuals, or gamergates in this case, apart from non-dominant individuals, or non-gamergates. H. saltator ants perform various different behaviors such as dueling, which is a mutually beneficial behavior, dominance biting, which is an aggressive behavior, and policing which is used to bring down those who are dominant. These behaviors can be used to study the importance of initiation and aggression in hierarchy formation. This experiment will explore how aggression through dominance biting, duel initiation, group size, and time period affect the formation of gamergates. To do so, socially unstable colonies of 15, 30, and 60 ants were video recorded for days until gamergates were established. Then, from the recordings, a period of high activity was selected and observed for dueling, duel initiation, dominance biting, dominance bite downs, and policing. The results showed that gamergates tended to perform dominance biting and dominance bite downs far more than non-gamergates during the period of high activity, but not as clearly with duelling and duel initiations. It was inconclusive whether or not the combination of both dueling and dominance biting was what set gamergates apart from non gamergates as different groups showed different results. Gamergates performed visibly more dominance bite downs than non-gamergates, so aggression may be important in setting gamergates apart from non-gamergates. In terms of group size, the smallest group had the least number of gamergates and the least activity, and the medium and large group had a similar number of gamergates and activity.

ContributorsVarghese, Sarah (Author) / Liebig, Juergen (Thesis director) / Haight, Kevin (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
148329-Thumbnail Image.png
Description

Olfactory discrimination tasks can provide useful information about how olfaction may have evolved by demonstrating which types of compounds animals will detect and respond to. Ants discriminate between nestmates and non-nestmates by using olfaction to detect the cuticular hydrocarbons on other ants, and Camponotus floridanus have particularly clear and aggressive

Olfactory discrimination tasks can provide useful information about how olfaction may have evolved by demonstrating which types of compounds animals will detect and respond to. Ants discriminate between nestmates and non-nestmates by using olfaction to detect the cuticular hydrocarbons on other ants, and Camponotus floridanus have particularly clear and aggressive responses to non-nestmates. A new method of adding hydrocarbons to ants, the “Snow Globe” method was further optimized and tested on C. floridanus. It involves adding hydrocarbons and a solvent to a vial of water, vortexing it, suspending hydrocarbon droplets throughout the solution, and then dipping a narcotized ant in. It is hoped this method can evenly coat ants in hydrocarbon. Ants were treated with heptacosane (C27), nonacosane (C29), hentriacontane (C31), a mixture of C27/C29/C31, 2-methyltriacontane (2MeC30), S-3-methylhentriacontane (SMeC31), and R-3-methylhentriacontane (RMeC31). These were chosen to see how ants reacted in a nestmate recognition context to methyl-branched hydrocarbons, R and S enantiomers, and to multiple added alkanes. Behavior assays were performed on treated ants, as well as two untreated controls, a foreign ant and a nestmate ant. There were 15 replicates of each condition, using 15 different queenright colonies. The Snow Globe method successfully transfers hydrocarbons, as confirmed by solid phase microextraction (SPME) done on treated ants, and the behavior assay data shows the foreign control, SMeC31, and the mixture of C27/29/31 were all statistically significant in their differences from the native control. The multiple alkane mixture received a significant response while single alkanes did not, which supports the idea that larger variations in hydrocarbon profile are needed for an ant to be perceived as foreign. The response to SMeC31 shows C. floridanus can respond during nestmate recognition to hydrocarbons that are not naturally occurring, and it indicates the nestmate recognition process may simply be responding to any compounds not found in the colony profile and rather than detecting particular foreign compounds.

ContributorsNoss, Serena Marie (Author) / Liebig, Juergen (Thesis director) / Pratt, Stephen (Committee member) / Haight, Kevin (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
135861-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Dielectrophoresis is a separations strategy that has the potential to separate small amounts of different proteins from each other. The forces at play in the channel used for dielectrophoresis are electroosmotic flow (EOF), electrophoresis (EP), and dielectrophoresis (DEP). EOF is the force exerted on liquid from an applied potential (1).

Dielectrophoresis is a separations strategy that has the potential to separate small amounts of different proteins from each other. The forces at play in the channel used for dielectrophoresis are electroosmotic flow (EOF), electrophoresis (EP), and dielectrophoresis (DEP). EOF is the force exerted on liquid from an applied potential (1). EP is the force exerted on charged particles in a uniform electric field (2). DEP is the force exerted on particles (charged and uncharged) in a non-uniform electric field (3). This experiment was focused on the testing of a new microfluidic device to see if it could improve the focusing of proteins in dielectrophoresis. It was predicted that the addition of a salt bridge would improve focusing by preventing the ions created by the electrolysis of water around the electrodes from interacting with the proteins and causing aggregation, among other problems. Control trials using the old device showed that electrolysis was likely occurring and was the causal agent for poor outcomes. After applying the electric potential for some time a pH front traveled through the channel causing aggregation of proteins and the current in the channel decreased rapidly, even while the voltage was held constant. The resistance in the channels of the control trials also slightly decreased over time, until the pH shift occurred, at which time it increased rapidly. Experimental trials with a new device that included salt bridges eliminated this pH front and had a roughly linear increase of current in the channel with the voltage applied. This device can now be used in future research with protein dielectrophoresis, including in the potential differentiation of different proteins. References: 1) Electroosmosis. Oxford Dictionary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. 2. Oxford University Press: Oxford, England. 2006. 2) Electrophoresis. Oxford Dictionary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. 2. Oxford University Press: Oxford, England. 2006. 3) Dielectrophoresis. Oxford Dictionary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. 2. Oxford University Press: Oxford, England. 2006.
ContributorsHayes, Katelyn Donna (Author) / Hayes, Mark (Thesis director) / Borges, Chad (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05