Behavioral correlations across activity, mating, exploration, aggression, and antipredator contexts in the European house cricket, Acheta domesticus

Recently, there has been increasing interest in behavioral syndrome research across a range of taxa. Behavioral syndromes are suites of correlated behaviors that are expressed either within a given behavioral context (e.g., mating) or between different contexts (e.g., foraging and mating). Syndrome research holds profound implications for animal behavior as it promotes a holistic view in which seemingly autonomous behaviors may not evolve independently, but as a “suite” or “package.” We tested whether laboratory-reared male and female European house crickets, Acheta domesticus, exhibited behavioral syndromes by quantifying individual differences in activity, exploration, mate attraction, aggressiveness, and antipredator behavior. To our knowledge, our study is the first to consider such a breadth of behavioral traits in one organism using the syndrome framework. We found positive correlations across mating, exploratory, and antipredatory contexts, but not aggression and general activity. These behavioral differences were not correlated with body size or condition, although age explained some of the variation in motivation to mate. We suggest that these across-context correlations represent a boldness syndrome as individual risk-taking and exploration was central to across-context mating and antipredation correlations in both sexes.     

Weather effects on avian breeding performance and implications of climate change

The influence of recent climate change on the world's biota has manifested broadly, resulting in latitudinal range shifts, advancing dates of arrival of migrants and onset of breeding, and altered community relationships. Climate change elevates conservation concerns worldwide because it will likely exacerbate a broad range of identified threats to animal populations. In the past few decades, grassland birds have declined faster than other North American avifauna, largely due to habitat threats such as the intensification of agriculture. We examine the effects of local climatic variations on the breeding performance of a bird endemic to the shortgrass prairie, the Lark Bunting (Calamospiza melanocorys) and discuss the implications of our findings relative to future climate predictions. Clutch size, nest survival, and productivity all positively covaried with seasonal precipitation; yet relatively intense daily precipitation events temporarily depressed daily survival of nests. Nest survival was positively related to average temperatures during the breeding season. Declining summer precipitation may reduce the likelihood that Lark Buntings can maintain stable breeding populations in eastern Colorado although average temperature increases of up to 3 degrees C (within the range of this study) may ameliorate declines in survival expected with drier conditions. Historic climate variability in the Great Plains selects for a degree of vagility and opportunism rather than strong site fidelity and specific adaptation to local environments. These traits may lead to northerly shifts in distribution if climatic and habitat conditions become less favorable in the drying southern regions of the Great Plains. Distributional shifts in Lark Buntings could be constrained by future changes in land use, agricultural practices, or vegetative communities that result in further loss of shortgrass prairie habitats.     

Content analysis of newspaper coverage of the Florida panther

Populations of large carnivores are declining globally, and analysis of public discourse about carnivores is useful for understanding public opinion and influences on management and policy. Portrayal of carnivores in the media affects public perceptions and support for their conservation. We conducted a content analysis of 513 articles about Florida panthers (Puma concolor coryi) published from 2003 to 2006 in newspapers with local circulation in core panther habitat in southwest Florida and papers with statewide circulation to compare the differences in the amount of coverage and portrayals of panther risks to people and property on the basis of proximity of human communities to panthers. Local papers published significantly more news articles and significantly longer news articles primarily about panthers. Articles in local and statewide papers used both episodic frames, which focus on specific occurrences (e.g., a panther sighting or predation) and thematic frames, which focus on general trends (e.g., abundance of panthers over time). Local articles more often emphasized risks that panthers might harm people, pets, or livestock than statewide papers. Our results are consistent with theory that proximity to human-carnivore conflict influences perceptions and salience of risks posed by large carnivores. Most articles mentioned panthers as a secondary topic, which we believe was a result of the relevance an endangered carnivore has in discussions of public land management, development, and regulations in Florida. Claims made by sources quoted in each article had a neutral to positive depiction of panthers, and most quotations were from federal and state agency scientists. We suggest continued use by the media of agency sources provides the opportunity for clear, concordant messages about panther management. Content analysis provides a way to monitor media portrayal of carnivores for consistency with agency outreach goals.     

Evaluating public participation in environmental decision-making: EPA's superfund community involvement program

This article discusses an 8-year, ongoing project that evaluates the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund community involvement program. The project originated as a response to the Government Performance and Results Act, which requires federal agencies to articulate program goals, and evaluate and report their progress in meeting those goals. The evaluation project assesses how effective the Superfund community involvement program is in promoting public participation in decisions about how to clean up hazardous wastes at Superfund sites. We do three things in the article: (1) share our experience with evaluating an Agency public participation program, including lessons learned about methods of evaluation; (2) report evaluation results; and (3) address a number of issues pertaining to the evaluation of public participation in environmental decision-making. Our goal is to encourage more environmental managers to incorporate evaluation into their public participation programs as a tool for improving them. We found that written mail surveys were an effective and economical tool for obtaining feedback on EPA's community involvement program at Superfund sites. The evaluation focused on four criteria: citizen satisfaction with EPA information about the Superfund site, citizen understanding of environmental and human health risks associated with the site, citizen satisfaction with opportunities provided by EPA for community input, and citizen satisfaction with EPA's response to community input. While the evaluation results were mixed, in general, community members who were most informed about and involved in the cleanup process at Superfund sites generally were also the most satisfied with the community involvement process, and the job that EPA was doing cleaning up the site. We conclude that systematic evaluation provides meaningful and useful information that agencies can use to improve their public participation programs. However, there need to be institutionalized processes that ensure evaluation results are used to develop and implement strategies for improvement.     

Cesium migration in Hanford sediment: a multisite cation exchange model based on laboratory transport experiments

Cs+ transport experiments carried out in columns packed with uncontaminated Hanford formation sediment from the SX tank farm provide strong support for the use of a multisite, multicomponent cation exchange model to describe Cs+ migration in the Hanford vadose zone. The experimental results indicate a strong dependence of the effective Cs+ Kd on the concentrations of other cations, including Na+ that is present at high to extremely high concentrations in fluids leaking from the Hanford SX tanks. A strong dependence of the Cs+ Kd on the aqueous Cs+ concentration is also apparent, with retardation of Cs+ increasing from a value of 41 at a Cs+ concentration of 10(-4) M in the feed solution to as much as 282 at a Cs+ concentration of 5x10(-7) M, all in a background of 1 M NaNO3. The total cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the Hanford sediment was determined using 22Na isotopic equilibrium exchange in a flow-through column experiment. The value for the CEC of 120 microeq/g determined with this method is compatible with a value of 121.9 microeq/g determined by multi-cation elution. While two distinct exchange sites were proposed by Zachara et al. [Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 66 (2002) 193] based on binary batch exchange experiments, a third site is proposed in this study to improve the fit of the Cs+-Na+ and Cs+-Ca+ exchange data and to capture self-sharpened Cs+ breakthrough curves at low concentrations of Cs+. Two of the proposed exchange sites represent frayed edge sites (FES) on weathered micas and constitute 0.02% and 0.22% of the total CEC. Both of the FES show a very strong selectivity for Cs+ over Na+ (K(Na-Cs)=10(7.22) and 10(4.93), respectively). The third site, accounting for over 99% of the total CEC, is associated with planar sites on expansible clays and shows a smaller Na+-Cs+ selectivity coefficient of 10(1.99). Parameters derived from a fit of binary batch experiments alone tend to under predict Cs+ retardation in the column experiments. The transport experiments indicate 72-90% of the Cs+ sorbed in experiments targeting exchange on FES was desorbed over a 10- and 24-day period, respectively. At high Cs+ concentrations, where sorption is controlled primarily by exchange on planar sites, 95% of the Cs+ desorption was desorbed. Most of the difficulty in desorbing Cs+ from FES is a result of the extremely high selectivity of these sites for Cs+, although truly irreversible sorption as high as 23% was suggested in one experiment. The conclusion that Cs+ exchange is largely reversible in a thermodynamic sense is supported by the ability to match Cs+ desorption curves almost quantitatively with an equilibrium reactive transport simulation. The model for Cs+ retardation developed here qualitatively explains the behavior of Cs+ in the Hanford vadose zone underneath a variety of leaking tanks with differing salt concentrations. The high selectivity of FES for Cs+ implies that future desorption and migration is very unlikely to occur under natural recharge conditions.     

DEVELOPING A RESULTS-ORIENTED APPROACH FOR WATER EDUCATION PROGRAMS1

ABSTRACT: Foundation theory and experiences are provided that support the need and value of utilizing a results-oriented approach in developing and evaluating water education programs. This approach includes the ability to determine actual learning outcomes, monitoring learning through time, and discovering attitude and behavior changes that result from program participation. The paper also includes a case study of such an evaluation project in connection with the Groundwater Foundation's annual Children's Groundwater Festival. A challenge is also made to water educators to begin assessing actual impacts of education programs on water quality. Plans for such a study relating to the Foundation's Ground-water Guardian program are outlined.     

Arsenic and thallium data in environmental samples: Fact or fiction?

Matrix effects may increasingly lead to erroneous environmental decisions as regulatory limits or risk‐based concentrations of concern for trace metals move lower toward the limits of analytical detection. A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Technical Standards Alert estimated that environmental data reported using inductively coupled plasma spectrometry (ICP‐AES) has a false‐positive rate for thallium of 99.9 percent and for arsenic of 25 to 50 percent. Although this does not seem to be widely known in the environmental community, using three case studies, this article presents data in environmental samples that demonstrate severe matrix effects on the accuracy of arsenic and thallium results. Case Study 1 involves soil results with concentrations that approached or exceeded the applicable regulatory soil cleanup objectives of 13 mg/kg for arsenic and 2 mg/kg for thallium. Reanalysis using ICP coupled with a mass spectrometer (ICP‐MS) confirmed all thallium results were false positives and all arsenic results were biased high, concluding no action was required for soil remediation. Case Study 2 involves groundwater results for thallium at a Superfund site, where thallium was detected in groundwater up to 21.6 μ g/L using ICP‐AES. Reanalysis by ICP‐MS reported thallium as nondetect below the applicable regulatory level in all samples. ICP‐MS is usually a more definitive and accurate method of analysis compared to ICP‐AES; however, this is not always the case, as we demonstrate in Case Study 3, using data from groundwater samples at an industrial site. Through a weight‐of‐evidence approach, it is demonstrated that although method quality control results were acceptable, interferences in some groundwater samples caused biased high results for arsenic using ICP‐MS, which were significantly lower when reanalyzed using hydride generation atomic fluorescence spectrometry. Causes of these interference effects and conclusions from the three case studies to obtain accurate metal data for site assessment, risk characterization, and remedy selection are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Maternal environment and the expression of murine neural tube defects

The role that genetic and environmental factors play in triggering neural tube defects in the mouse mutant curly-tail (ct) were investigated by transplanting curly-tail blastocysts into the uterus of either curly-tail females or females of an unrelated A strain with a low natural incidence of abnormalities of the neural tube. The percentages of fetuses with neural tube defects were found to be similar in both groups. These results show that in curly-tail mice exencephaly and spina bifida are manifested independently of the maternal environment.     

A comparison of sound propagation and song frequency in temperate marsh and grassland habitats

Summary Attenuation of pure tones was measured in marsh and grassland habitat. At surface level, in grassland, the ground effect strongly attenuated frequencies below 2.0 kHz (Fig. 2). The ground effect was reduced by increasing source-receiver elevation. In marsh habitat the ground effect did not occur, and low frequencies were optimal for sound propagation (Fig. 3). As predicted from sound propagation tests, analysis of recorded songs of seven grassland and six marsh species indicated that minimum and emphasized frequency were significantly lower in songs of marsh birds. Maximum frequency did not differ between habitats (Table 4). Buzzing songs of yellow-headed blackbirds were broadcast and re-recorded at 1 and 50 m from the speaker in marsh and grassland habitats. Low frequency components attenuated more rapidly than higher frequency components in grassland, and the reverse occurred in marsh. Results suggested that the ground effect restricts the use of low frequencies by grassland birds. This evidence is consistent with the sound window hypothesis of Morton.