Lalit K. Pandey, Elizabeth A. Bergey, Jie Lyu, Jihae Park, Soyeon Choi, Hojun Lee, Stephen Depuydt, Young-Tae Oh, Sung-Mo Lee, Taejun Han   Diatoms are regularly used for bioassessment and ecotoxicological studies in relation to environmental and anthropogenic disturbances. Traditional taxonomical diatom parameters (cell counts, biovolume estimates, species richness, diversity indices and metrics [...]

Hussan Gill, Kyler Rogers, Bilal Rehman, John Moynihan, Elizabeth A. Bergey   Cigarette butts are a common form of litter that is often deposited on soil, where toxins from butts may affect soil-dwelling organisms. We examined possible toxicity of cigarette butts to the woodland snail Anguispira alternata using a toxicity study with cigarette [...]

Theodore J. Zenzal Jr, Andrea J. Contina, Jeffrey F. Kelly and Frank R. Moore   Autumn latitudinal migrations generally exhibit one of two different temporal migration patterns: type 1 where southern populations migrate south before northern populations, or type 2 where northern populations overtake southern populations en route. The ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris) is [...]

Silke Bauer, Jason W. Chapman, Don R. Reynolds, José A. Alves, Adriaan M. Dokter, Myles M. H. Menz, Nir Sapir, Michał Ciach, Lars B. Pettersson, Jeffrey F. Kelly, Hidde Leijnse , Judy Shamoun-Baranes   Migratory animals provide a multitude of services and disservices—with benefits or costs in the order of billions of dollars [...]

Jeff Kelly, Joel Strong, Jesse Bahm, and Adrienne Lee Cooper As part of its biological inventory program the National Park Service (NPS) contracted with the Oklahoma Natural Heritage Inventory to conduct a formal and comprehensive mammal, bird, and herpetological inventory of Chickasaw National Recreation Area (CNRA), Oklahoma. The objective of the inventory was [...]

Plant genotypic variation and intra-specific diversity trump soil nutrient availability to shape old-field structure and function 1. Individual plant genotypes as well as genotypic diversity can shape the structure and function of ecosystems; however, the abiotic environment may modify these genotypic influences on ecosystem-level responses. 2. To explore how the interactions between plant [...]

Electromagnetic Model Reliably Predicts Radar Scattering Characteristics of Airborne Organisms The radar scattering characteristics of aerial animals are typically obtained from controlled laboratory measurements of a freshly harvested specimen. These measurements are tedious to perform, difficult to replicate, and typically yield only a small subset of the full azimuthal, elevational, and polarimetric radio [...]

Migrating birds make strategic decisions at multiple temporal and spatial scales. They must select flight altitudes, speeds, and orientations in order to maintain preferred directions of movement and to minimize energy expenditure and risk. Spring flights follow a rapid phenology, but how this rapid transit translates to in-flight decisions is not clear. We described flight [...]

Bumble bees (Bombus Latreille) provide indispensable ecosystem services for natural and agricultural systems by increasing crop yield and quality. With documented bumble bee declines throughout the world, the need for baseline data on these important insects becomes apparent. The bumble bees of Oklahoma have previously not been surveyed, hampering assessment of temporal change. The objectives [...]

Long-term drought in the southern Great Plains increases the vulnerability of coupled human-environment systems at a variety of scales. Developing better understandings of the dynamics at regional scales will become increasingly important as long-established land-use regimes break down in the face of climate change, resource depletion, and evolving governance. To demonstrate differential vulnerability during drought [...]