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Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
It is clear that the genetic networks that control the shape and patterning of important phenotypic traits are much more important to trait evolution than was previously thought. This study addresses the ability of the Drosophila...
Cooperation is a complex behavior in which individuals act in ways that increase the fitness of others, at some cost to themselves. In cooperatively breeding vertebrates, helpers capable of reproducing forgo their own reproduction to...
Sponges form symbioses with a wide array of mesofauna including polychaetes, crustaceans, brittle stars, and bivalves. These organisms use the sponge for food and shelter, but their effect on the sponge is largely unknown. The...
Understanding the ultimate and proximate mechanisms of spadefoot tadpole developmental polyphenism is the first step in gaining a mechanistic and evolutionary understanding of the factors responsible for the control and evolution of...
The Caribbean spiny lobster, Panulirus argus, is found throughout the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas. In 1998, lobsters were discovered with small black, necrotic lesions on the carapace some associated with trauma. Since then the number...
Thyroxine is arguably the most important hormone in anuran development and affects development through exogenous and endogenous means. In this study, I investigate the relationship between exogenous thyroxine and spadefoot tadpole...
Aspects of global change - specifically, elevated soil nitrogen deposition and warming - are resulting in significant changes in native plant communities. These effects can be direct through changes in productivity, or indirect through...
The mammalian olfactory bulb (OB) has a vast population of dopamine (DA) neurons, whose function is to increase odor discrimination through mostly inhibitory synaptic mechanisms. However, it is not well understood whether there is more...
Nucleosome distributions are critically important in regulating access to the eukaryotic genome. Cells with different physiologies have strikingly similar nucleosome distributions. Few studies in human cells have measured genome-wide...
Zika virus (ZIKV) is a re-emerging mosquito-borne flavivirus that has been linked to severe neurological disorders such as microcephaly in newborns as well as Guillain-Barré syndrome in adults. It is closely related to other flaviviruses...
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a complex heterogeneous disease characterized by multiple mutations affecting critical signaling pathways. Limitations in therapeutic treatments due to the development of resistance mechanisms, toxicity, and...
The linker of the nucleoskeleton and cytoskeleton (LINC) protein complex bridges the inner and outer nuclear membranes and regulates a range of nuclear activities that include telomere tethering and chromosome movement. The canonical...
Neontological studies of reptilian growth are important as they provide a proxy allowing investigation of the life history of extinct relatives. As such, finding modern correlates for bone growth and histological types that can then be...
Motor displays (displays that involve visible body movements) are an integral component of many courtship displays and have the potential to be important signals of male quality to females during mate choice. The whole organism is used...
The maize (Zea mays L) initiator-binding protein2 (IBP2) gene is known to encode a protein, IBP2, with promoter-binding activity. IBP2 also resembles telomere DNA-binding proteins from other plant species. Therefore, we investigated...
Animals move through landscapes where their resources are unevenly and often patchily distributed. When animals move and choose among their scattered resources in predictable ways, ecologists may be able to anticipate the spatial...
Have you ever noticed when you are hungry and looking for something to eat, you can smell the freshly salted fries of McDonalds before seeing the golden arches? That is because our sense of smell, olfaction, is intimately linked with...
Eukaryotic genomes replicate via the synchronous firing of clusters of origins that together produce multi-replicon domains, each of which replicates at a defined time during S-phase. This temporal program is termed the DNA replication...
The role of insulin pathways in olfaction are of significant interest with the widespread pathology of Diabetes mellitus and its associated metabolic and neuronal co-morbidities. Previous experiments have been conducted examining insulin...
Differences in behavior and physiology can arise and change because of variation in life history strategies or differences in discrete polymorphisms. These differences can result from the indirect effects of predation, or responses to...
Many animals, including humans, choose their source of nutrition based on the nutritive value and the flavor (i.e, odor, taste and texture) of available foods. Sweet taste is one of the more potent orosensory stimuli that contributes to...
Understanding the evolution of cooperative behaviors is a major goal of evolutionary biology, but the majority of research in this field has focused on why helpers assist others. Helpers’ reproductive costs introduce a clear paradox to...
DNA replication in mammalian cells occurs in a defined temporal order during S phase, known as the replication timing (RT) programme. Replication timing is developmentally regulated and correlated with chromatin conformation and local...
Conditioned taste aversion (CTA) learning occurs after the pairing of a novel taste with a toxin (e.g. sucrose taste with LiCl toxin). The immediate early gene c-Fos is necessary for CTA learning, but c-Fos alone cannot be sufficient for...
Prolactin is a protein hormone predominately synthesized in and secreted from cells in the anterior pituitary gland called lactotrophs. Although prolactin is elevated during other physiological states, mating induces a unique pattern of...
Species interactions can regulate a population’s density and therefore can act as a selective force on that population. Such evolutionary responses have the potential to feedback and change ecological interactions between species. For...
Expression of Axdazl and Axvh in Axolotl Germ Cells, Suggest that Regulative Germ Cells Specifications is a Primitive Trait Conserved in the Mammalian Lineage
How germ cells are specified in animal embryos has been a mystery for decades. Unlike most developmental processes, which are highly conserved, embryos specify germ cells in very different ways. The embryos of several prominent model...
The effective conservation of threatened and endangered plants requires an understanding of population dynamics and the evaluation of factors that could reduce population growth. I constructed and analyzed a stage structured demographic...
Mortality in humans is primarily due to diseases with complex causes such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Finding the genetic underpinnings of such diseases could lead to advances in medicine. Reviewing studies that try to locate...
Genetic variation is a dominant feature in the study of evolution. The presence of variation is embedded at every level, from a single individual all the way to different species. Understanding the mechanisms that allow variation to be...
During the past 30 years, there have been several Flaviviridae threats. Among them, Hepatatis C virus (HCV) emerged in the Western hemisphere as the previously unidentified etiological agent of non-A non-B hepatitis in transfusion...
Interferon (IFN)-mediated innate immune response is the first line of defense against viral infections. And interferon regulatory factor 7 (IRF7) is a potent transcription factor of type I IFNs and IFN stimulated genes (ISGs) and is...
Budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has a unique cell cycle. During its S-phase, DNA replication occurs, but spindle formation and chromosome-microtubule attachment also take place. Thus, how to couple spindle formation and...
Conditioned taste aversion (CTA) is a unique form of classical conditioning whereby an animal learns to associate a novel taste stimulus with negative visceral effects. Acquisition of CTA results in reduced intake of future presentations...
The smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata) is a critically endangered species endemic to the Atlantic Ocean. The only known viable populations have been found along the coast of Florida as well as in the coastal areas of the Bahamas. In...
Epithelial tissues rely on the activity of stem cells to sustain their structure and proper functioning. These stem cells are responsible for generating various types of cells, that are essential for the tissue's normal homeostasis, ...
There is a well-established relationship between the olfactory and the endocrine systems. At the center of this relationship sits the olfactory bulb, which acts as a relay station for the sense of smell. In fact, neurons in the olfactory...
Oxidoreductase enzyme complexes are one of the known biomolecular machines, which play a crucial role in cellular biochemistry including metabolic, signaling, and electron transport pathways. In these complexes, individual subunits can...
Many genetic patterns observed within and between species are often attributed to processes that affect interpopulation genetic exchange. These patterns are often taken as evidence of the genetic processes without explicit tests of the...
Prolactin is a fertility hormone produced and released by the anterior pituitary gland. Normal changes in prolactin levels influence fertility and these changes are carefully regulated by neuroendocrine cells in the hypothalamus....
Coral allene oxide synthase (cAOS), a hemoprotein with sequence similarity to bovine liver catalase (BLC), is the N-terminal domain of a fusion protein with an 8R-lipoxygenase in coral Plexaura homomalla. A radical having a g-value of 2...
The Zika virus (ZIKV) presents a threat to the health of pregnant women and developing fetuses as it is associated with microcephaly. There is a current gap in the understanding of how ZIKV affects the host’s chromatin architecture....
Large-scale cytogenetic mapping in maize has been a major challenge primarily due to fact that the maize genome has a low gene density and an abundance of repetitive sequence elements. Using a unique combination of biological and genome...
Plant cytogenetics has continued to flourish and make essential contributions to genomics projects by delineating marker order, defining contig gaps, and revealing genome rearrangements. Here we review the field of plant cytogenetics...
Monitoring Movement Patterns of Juvenile Smalltooth Sawfish (Pristis Pectinata) Using Acoustic Monitoring and Tracking in a Nursery Habitat in Southwest Florida
Habitat use studies can be used to both investigate ecological and behavioral patterns of animals as well as provide a useful management tool for conservation planners. However, essential habitat can be difficult to determine for highly...
Epigenetic regulation of gene expression involves a steady-state balance of acetylation carried about by histone acetyltransferases (HATs) and histone deacetylases (HDACs). HATs act as transcriptional co-activators and HDACs interact...
A population of Odontomachus brunneus, a primitive species of Ponerine ants, located in north Florida was studied for a one-year period. Through nest excavation and colony census, the annual cycle of reproduction and colony growth was...
The current treatment for hepatitis C virus (HCV) consists of a combination therapy of alpha interferon (IFN-alpha) and ribivirin (RBV). Due to IFN resistance and side effects, new classes of drugs are needed to combat HCV infection....
Previous studies have shown the bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei, to be a useful model for investigating the role of environment in driving visual system evolution and plasticity (Fuller et al 2003, 2004, 2005). Environmental plasticity...
Lakes in the southeastern United States support a high diversity of reptiles and amphibians, including many species of turtles. Reptilian omnivores are abundant and their role in lake food webs must be important. In Leon County, Florida, ...
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
