Matching Items (95)
Description
Animals must learn to ignore stimuli that are irrelevant to survival, a process referred to as latent inhibition. The Amtyr1 gene has been shown through quantitative trait loci mapping to be linked to strong latent inhibition in honey bees. Here we implicate this G-protein coupled receptor for the biogenic amine tyramine as an important factor underlying this form of learning in honey bees. We show that dsRNA targeted to disrupt the tyramine receptors, specifically affects latent inhibition but not excitatory associative conditioning. Our results therefore identify a distinct reinforcement pathway for latent inhibition in insects.
ContributorsPetersen, Mary Margaret (Author) / Smith, Brian (Thesis director) / Wang, Ying (Committee member) / Sinakevitch, Irina (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The fence between the US and Mexico had been and continues to be a controversial topic in both the U.S., Mexico and around the world. This study will look at the negative externalities related to the environment, society, and economy of the current fence on the border. The central question behind the thesis is whether or not the fence has a direct impact on the ecosystem and people around it.
ContributorsHoyt, Stephanie Alexis (Author) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis director) / Breetz, Hanna (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
In Apis mellifera, gustatory responsiveness to sucrose is a good indicator of learning ability \u2014 in that individuals with high sucrose responsiveness will typically form faster, longer-lasting associations with conditioned stimulus than individuals with a low sucrose responsiveness. The purpose of this study was to determine whether experience with olfactory conditioning had lasting effects on gustatory responsiveness. Groups were placed in an environment that would facilitate association of an odor to a sucrose reward, tested for retention, then tested for gustatory responsiveness. Control groups underwent the same testing schedule, but were not exposed to odor in the first environment. There was no significant difference in gustatory responsiveness between the two groups. Mann-Whitney tests were used to analyze the results, and though the mean GRS score was lower among the treatment group there was no significant trend, possibly due to small sample sizes.
ContributorsSeemann, J. H. (Author) / Amdam, Gro (Thesis director) / Smith, Brian (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
ABSTRACT Over the past several decades, the dilemma of free-roaming horses in the U.S. has proven to be one of the most divisive issues in management of public lands. According to federal land management agencies, without population regulation, horses can increase at the rate of 15-20% a year on arid rangelands with inadequate numbers of natural, large predators. Horses compete for valuable forage and water resources alongside cattle and native wildlife in delicate riparian areas highly susceptible to the negative ecological effects of soil compaction and overgrazing. Most U.S. management policies, therefore, call for increased removal of free-roaming horses as they are categorized as “un-authorized livestock” or "non-native" species. Wild horse advocates, however, continue to petition for improvement in animal welfare and expansion of the horses’ territory. With heightened social conflict spurred by animal rights and ecological concerns, not to mention the often-stark differences over what really “belongs” on the landscape, the success of appropriate management strategies hinges on managing agencies’ preparedness and ability to respond in a timely and inclusive manner. A critical element of the management context is the public’s views toward the wild horse and the science used to manage them. Synthesizing the vast literature in the history and philosophy of wildlife management in the American West, and utilizing an ethnographic and case study approach, my research examines the range of stakeholder concerns and analyzes the factors that have led to the disconnect between public values of wild horses and public policy for the management of the federally protected free-roaming horses in Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests.
ContributorsMurphree, Julie Joan (Author) / Minteer, Ben A. (Thesis advisor) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Bradshaw, Karen (Committee member) / Chew, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Communications around sustainability have been found to be incongruent with eliciting the transformative change required to address global climate change and its' repercussions. Recent research has been exploring storytelling in sustainability, specifically with an emphasis on reflexive and emancipatory methods. These methods encourage embracing and contextualizing complexity and intend to target entire cognitive hierarchies. This study explores the possibility of using emancipatory and reflexive storytelling as a tool to change attitudes pertaining to the Valley Metro Light Rail, an example of a complex sustainability mitigation effort. I explore this in four steps: 1) Conducted a pre-survey to gauge preexisting attitudes and predispositions; 2) Provided a narrative that uses storytelling methodologies of reflexivity and emancipation through a story about the light rail; 3) Conducted a post-survey to gauge attitude shift resulting from the narrative intervention; 4) Facilitated a focus group discussion to examine impact qualitatively. These steps intended to provide an answer to the question: How does emancipatory and reflexive storytelling impact affective, cognitive and conative attitudes regarding local alternative transportation? By using tripartite attitude model, qualitative and quantitative analysis this paper determines that reflexive and emancipatory storytelling impacts attitudinal structures. The impact is marginal in the survey response, though the shift indicated a narrowing of participant responses towards one another, indicative of participants subscribing to emancipation and reflexivity of their held attitudes. From the group discussion, it was evident from qualitative responses that participants engaged in emancipating themselves from their held attitudes and reflected upon them. In doing so they engaged in collaboration to make suggestions and suggest actions to help those with experiences that differed from their own. Though this research doesn’t provide conclusive evidence, it opens the door for future research to assess these methodologies as a tool to elicit shared values, beliefs and norms, which are necessary for collective action leading to transformative change in response to global climate change.
ContributorsSwanson, Jake Ryan (Author) / Roseland, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Larson, Kelli (Committee member) / Calhoun, Craig (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Understanding the dynamic interactions between humans and wildlife is essential to establishing sustainable wildlife-based ecotourism (WBE). Animal behavior exists within a complex feedback loop that affects overall ecosystem function, tourist satisfaction, and socioeconomics of local communities. However, the specific value that animal behavior plays in provisioning ecosystem services has not been thoroughly evaluated. People enjoy activities that facilitate intimate contact with animals, and there are many perceived benefits associated with these experiences, such as encouraging pro-environmental attitudes that can lead to greater motivation for conservation. There is extensive research on the effects that unregulated tourism activity can have on wildlife behavior, which include implications for population health and survival. Prior to COVID-19, WBE was developing rapidly on a global scale, and the pause in activity caused by the pandemic gave natural systems the chance to recover from environmental damage from over-tourism and provided insights into how tourism could be less impactful in the future. Until now it has been undetermined how changes in animal behavior can alter the relationships and socioeconomics of this multidimensional system. This dissertation provides a thorough exploration of the behavioral, ecological, and economic parameters required to model biosocial interactions and feedbacks within the whale watching system in Las Perlas Archipelago, Panama. Through observational data collected in the field, this project assessed how unmanaged whale watching activity is affecting the behavior of Humpback whales in the area as well as the socioeconomic and conservation contributions of the industry. Additionally, it is necessary to consider what a sustainable form of wildlife tourism might be, and whether the incorporation of technology will help enhance visitor experience while reducing negative impacts on wildlife. To better ascertain whether this concept of this integration would be favorably viewed, a sample of individuals was surveyed about their experiences about using technology to enhance their interactions with nature. This research highlights the need for more deliberate identification and incorporation of the perceptions of all stakeholders (wildlife included) to develop a less-impactful WBE industry that provides people with opportunities to establish meaningful relationships with nature that motivate them to help meet the conservation challenges of today.
ContributorsSurrey, Katie (Author) / Gerber, Leah (Thesis advisor) / Guzman, Hector (Committee member) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
University-level sustainability education in Western academia attempts to focus on eliminating future harm to people and the planet. However, Western academia as an institution upholds systems of oppression and reproduces settler colonialism. This reproduction is antithetical to sustainability goals as it continues patterns of Indigenous erasure and extractive relationships to the Land that perpetuate violence towards people and the planet. Sustainability programs, however, offer several frameworks, including resilience, that facilitate critical interrogations of social-ecological systems. In this thesis, I apply the notion of resilience to the perpetuation of settler colonialism within university-level sustainability education. Specifically, I ask: How is settler colonialism resilient in university-level sustainability education? How are, or could, sustainability programs in Western academic settings address settler colonialism? Through a series of conversational interviews with faculty and leadership from Arizona State University School of Sustainability, I analyzed how university-level sustainability education is both challenging and shaped by settler colonialism. These interviews focused on faculty perspectives on the topic and related issues; the interviews were analyzed using thematic coding in NVivo software. The results of this project highlight that many faculty members are already concerned with and focused on challenging settler colonialism, but that settler colonialism remains resilient in this system due to feedback loops at the personal level and reinforcing mechanisms at the institutional level. This research analyzes these feedback loops and reinforcing mechanisms, among others, and supports the call for anti-colonial and decolonial reconstruction of curriculum, as well as a focus on relationship building, shifting of mindset, and school-wide education on topics of white supremacy, settler colonialism, and systems of oppression in general.
ContributorsBills, Haven (Author) / Klinsky, Sonja (Thesis advisor) / Goebel, Janna (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Understanding learning in fruit flies (D. melanogaster) can lead to many important discoveries about learning in humans due to the large overlap of shared DNA and the appearance of the same diseases in both species. Fruit flies have already been test subjects for many influential research experiments, some of which earned Nobel Prizes. This study seeks to investigate inhibitory conditioning in a way that differs from the traditional forward pairing inhibitory conditioning. Specifically, this experiment aims to establish inhibitory learning in fruit flies using backward association. The results show that when fruit flies are trained using backward conditioning as opposed to forward conditioning, there is a pattern of preference that differs substantially from the results showing an aversion to the associated odor in forward conditioning. When comparing the data using Two-Factor ANOVA of forward versus backward conditioning, it clearly indicates that the results are significant. Simply by altering the temporal placement of an unconditioned stimulus and a conditioned stimulus, the fruit flies learn significantly differently, switching from an aversion to the paired odor to a preference. Based on these results, fruit flies can be considered capable of inhibitory learning via backward pairing. Further research will consider whether responses become stronger after more repetitions of the training, and summation and retardation tests can be done in order to confirm that the response is, in fact, due to inhibitory conditioning and not just habituation.
ContributorsLawrence, Heidi (Author) / Smith, Brian (Thesis director) / de Belle, John (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
In the face of widespread pollinator decline, research has increasingly focused on ways that pesticides could be harming bees. Fungicides are pesticides that are used in greater volumes than insecticides, yet significantly fewer studies have investigated the effects of these agrochemicals. The fungicide Pristine® is commonly used on bee-pollinated crops and has been shown to be detrimental to physiological processes that are key to honey bee foraging, such as digestion and learning. This study seeks to investigate how Pristine® exposure affects the amount of water, nectar, and pollen that honey bees collect. Colonies were fed either plain pollen patties or pollen patties containing 23 ppm Pristine®. Exposure to fungicide had no significant effect on corbicular pollen mass, the crop volumes of nectar or water foragers, or the proportions of foragers collecting different substances. There was a significantly higher sugar concentration in the crop of Pristine®-exposed nectar foragers (43.6%, 95% CI [38.8, 48.4]) compared to control nectar foragers (36.3%, 95% CI [31.9, 40.6]). The higher sugar concentration in the nectar of Pristine®-treated bees could indicate that the agrochemical decreases sucrose responsiveness or nutritional status in bees. Alternatively, fungicide exposure may increase the amount of sugar that bees need to make it back to the hive. Based on these results, it would appear that fungicides like Pristine® do not strongly affect the amounts of substances that honey bees collect, but it is still highly plausible that treated bees forage more slowly or with lower return rates.
ContributorsChester, Elise (Author) / Harrison, Jon (Thesis director) / DesJardins, Nicole (Committee member) / Smith, Brian (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Active sensing is a sensory phenomenon in which organisms use self-generated energy to examine their surroundings. This experiment strives to better understand active sensing in honeybees, predicting that active sensing may display itself primarily through antennae movement and that preventing antennae movement may result in differences in electroantennogram dose-response curves and associative learning plasticity. This will be done by examining changes in amplitude in electroantennogram response in both fixed-antenna and free-antenna bees over the course of a differential training protocol that establishes learned behavior discrimination.
ContributorsLei, Harry (Author) / Smith, Brian (Thesis director) / Albin-Brooks, Christopher (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2023-05