ekirchner's blog

In intersexual sleection, there are many, nonmutually exclusive indirect benefits to the female and her offspring. Females wnat to receive "good genes" for their offspring, and they ensure this by evaluating a potential male in a number of ways. Females will look for high amounts of symmetry because it has evolved to represent developmental stability. They will look at display vigor and quality, like in spider displays and canary trills. Females will counter in longetivity, meaning that they will generally go for an older male sice he has alreay proven that he can live long. In Bowerbirds, the amount of decorations on a male indicates his age, and therefore his wisdom. Freedom from disease is anotehr factor, and this could be indicated by plumage. Potential handicaps could also be something the female considers, in the thought process that if his male can survive with a handicap, he must be really otherwise fit. Lastly, lots of females try to mate with the correct amount of inbreedng and outbreeding in mind, based on the hypothesis that local mates are better. Swans do this by looking at facial markings, and mating with those that are similar but not identical. 

Intersexual selection in animal behavior involves mate choice, which is usually done by the females since they invest more energy into each offspring. Some direct benefits of a choosy female include nuptial gifts, parental care, territory quality, and resource benefits. Nuptial gifts are things a male might bring a female to encourage her to mate with him. These are a lot of the time rey items, such as in the empid fly, spermatophores, such as in insects or salamanders, or body parts, like how female crickets are allowed to gnaw off the wing of a male they are mating with. Being choosy can benefit the female by providing her with better parental care. This is true in stickeback fish, where males with red bellies are preferrable since they indicate the mall will be better at fanning the eggs with oxygen after they are fertilized. Territory quality is another way the female wins by being choosy. Lots of female birds will assess a territory established by the male before choosing, ensuring her a safe place to mate and rear her young. Lastly, there are other resource benefits a hosen male may provide. In chimpanzees, males provide the females with food, and in dung beetles, males provide a dung ball for feed and a place to mate. These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, meaning that in any given species, more than one can be true at any time.

This semester was the first time I have had any classes with independent research projects. That being said, I really enjoyed the project and poster we did on seed germination and seed coat manipulation. Before the project, My group and i had worked on the proposal and we worked very hard on the logistics of it, so planning the project was actually fairly easy. The only real task was incorporating a new group into the project, but we had already addressed multiple groups in the proposal. The data collection for the project went fairly smoothely and making the poster was very straight-forward especially when the work was split among us. I enjoyed making a poster for the final project because we have done so much writing throughout the semester. The class where we went over making the poster I also found very useful, especially format of images, programs to make them on, and what to include on your poster in general. I thought that the porject assignment was a great wrap-up to the semester. 

The proposal project asked us to work as a group to develop a research project focusing on a specific topic. Before the project, I was excited to develop the experiment with a group and all the obstacles that came with it. As the project progressed, we worked together to solve problems within the experiment and the logistics/feasibility. However, once the proposal project was done, I found it unsatisfying. I felt like it was a bit too much work, especially since some of the proposals did not get used at all. I suppose some of the information put in the proposal helped us with the rearch poster at the end, but not enough (in my opinion) that made it worth doing. 

Overall, I enjoyed the methods project. Before beginning the project, I thought it may be too much work, and I was a little annoyed about how much out-of-class time was required. After beginning,however, I started to see just how valuable the project actually was. I also was surprised at how smoothely it went, and I dd not have to put extreme aounts of effort into it, especially following the methods of my peer. I found it useful to see someone else's writing and use it to format methods sections in other classes. Overall, this project taught me how to write clearly and concisely, how to put just the right amount of detail into something, and how to put myself into anoher scientist's shoes. I imagined being a person outside of this class, and how my thought process would be if I was seeing these methods for the first time. It also helped me remove myself from the writing, even when using "I" statements, when we went over differences vs. assumptions and writing without judgement. I used what I learned from the methods project to help me write my midterm report for another lab, and I am sure it will help me again in the future.

            The goal of our project was to observe the effects that manipulating the seed coat had on germination rates in soybean species. The seed coat is important for protecting the seed, but we were wondering if it is at all necessary for initial growth to occur. To test this, we had some serve as a control group, some where the coat was nicked with a needle, and some where the seed coat was completely removed. Over the course of 3.5 days, the seeds stayed in petri dishes with wet paper towels, and we periodically checked all the seeds and recorded how many of each treatment had germinated. Because another group completed this project with us, we focused mostly on how the control group's germination rates differed from that of the nicked group. Our results showed a trend in faster germination among the nicked seed coats, but after statistical analysis we cannot conclude that nicking of the seed coat leads to faster germination. We must say that the differences observed most likely occurred by chance.

            Our project’s goal was to observe the effects that manipulating the seed coat had on germination rates. The seed coat is important for protecting the seed in the ground, but we were wondering if it is completely necessary. To test this, we used soybean species and had some serve as a control group, some where the coat was nicked with a needle, and some where the seed coat was completely removed. Over the course of 3.5 days, the seeds were placed in petri dishes with wet paper towels, and we periodically checked all the seeds and recorded how many of each treatment had germinated. Because another group completed this project with us, we focused mostly on the control group vs. the nicked group. Our results show a trend in faster germination among the nicked seed coats, but after statistical analysis we cannot conclude that nicking of the seed coat leads to faster germination, and we must say that the differences observed most likely occurred by chance.

Th cell cycle is the series of events that occurs within the cell that let it grow and divide. G1 is the first phase, where the cell is growing and building up nutrients to prepare for DNA replication. This occurs next, in the S phase. After DNA replication is G2 phase, which is another growth hase. The cell is growing to help it be big and full of enough nutrients for when it divides. Cell division occurs during M phase after G2, and this includes, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. After cytokinesis occurs, the cell cycle is finished. Throughout the cell cycle, there are certain checkpoints to make sure everything is a-ok before proceeding. These checkpoints include checking for DNA damage, incomplete DNA replication, and inproper spindle attachment. 

BORIS is a program used in the life sciences for coding and observation of videos. In my lab, we use BORIS to code for teh behavior of slugs in obervational experiments. I am currently using this program to score the behavior of baby slugs after exposing them to conpressin for an hour. I record them for an hour in untreated conditions, and then for an hour in water with a 10^-6 concentration of conopressin. The behaviors I am scoring for are explore, turn (either right or left and 180/360 degrees), top-surf, sie-surf, escape, contract, and rear. Top-surfing is described as floating, where only the foot is attached to the top surface of the water. Side-surfin is described as the foot being attached to the wall of the well. Rearing is the lifting of only the head and looking up while the rest of the body stays attached to the floor.