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Effects of fish predation on benthic communities in the San Juan Archipelago
Predation is a strong driver of community assembly, particularly in marine systems. Rockfish and other large fishes are the dominant predators in the rocky subtidal habitats of the San Juan Archipelago in NW Washington State. Here I examine the consumptive effects of these predatory fishes, beginning with a study of rockfish ...
Tidal migration patterns moderate thermal risk in the intertidal snail Nucella ostrina
Physical environmental characteristics place limits on when and where organisms can survive, thereby shaping distributions and abundances of species. A thermal performance curve is often used to describe the organism’s performance along a thermal environmental gradient. Behavior can moderate temperatures experienced by an ...
Tooth Roots and the Periodontal Ligament: Morphology, Modeling and Behavior
The relationship between tooth roots and diet is relatively unexplored, although a logical relationship between harder diets and increased root surface area is suggested. Two studies were done to address the interaction between tooth root morphology, diet and bite force in small mammals. In bats there was a clear relationship ...
The Functional Morphology of Hard-Prey Crushing Teeth
Durophagy is the consumption of hard-shelled prey-items, like shelled molluscs and crustaceans with hard exoskeletons. In order to break these hard shells, organisms need to be able to generate large bite-forces, which are transferred to the prey via the teeth. As such, the teeth of durophagous predators are specialized, ...
Biology and Ecology of Hexacorallians in the San Juan Archipelago
Hexacorallians are one of the most conspicuous and dominant suspension feeders in temperate and tropical environments. While temperate hexacorallians are particularly diverse in the northeast Pacific, little work has been done in examining their biology and ecology. Within this dissertation, I describe a novel method for ...
Functional Anatomy and Evolution of a Novel Skeletal Element in Bat Feet
The striking postcranial anatomy of bats reflects their specialized ecology; they are the only mammals capable of powered flight. Bat postcranial adaptations include a series of membranes that connect highly-modified, or even novel, skeletal elements. While most studies of bat postcranial anatomy have focused on their wings, ...
Genomic and morphological analysis of an American crow hybrid zone
The Northwestern Crow (Corvus caurinus) and American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) are continuously distributed sister taxa that lack reliable traditional characters for identification near their range boundary. We used genomic SNPs (nuDNA) and mtDNA to investigate the degree of genetic differentiation and hybridization between ...