Connected While Distant: Networking CUREs Across Classrooms to Create Community and Empower Students.

Connections, collaborations, and community are key to the success of individual scientists as well as transformative scientific advances. Intentionally building these components into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education can better prepare future generations of researchers. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are a new, fast-growing teaching practice in STEM that expand opportunities for undergraduate students to gain research skills.

Temporal vs. spatial variation in stress-associated metabolites within a population of climate-sensitive small mammals.

Temporal variation in stress might signify changes in an animal's internal or external environment, while spatial variation in stress might signify variation in the quality of the habitats that individual animals experience. Habitat-induced variations in stress might be easiest to detect in highly territorial animals, and especially in species that do not take advantage of common strategies for modulating habitat-induced stress, such as migration (escape in space) or hibernation (escape in time). Spatial and temporal variation in response to potential stressors has received little study in wild animals, especially at scales appropriate for relating stress to specific habitat characteristics.

Gut microbial communities of American pikas (Ochotona princeps): Evidence for phylosymbiosis and adaptations to novel diets.

Gut microbial communities provide many physiological functions to their hosts, especially in herbivorous animals. We still lack an understanding of how these microbial communities are structured across hosts in nature, especially within a given host species. Studies on laboratory mice have demonstrated that host genetics can influence microbial community structure, but that diet can overwhelm these genetic effects.

Plastic pikas: Behavioural flexibility in low-elevation pikas (Ochotona princeps).

Behaviour is an important mechanism for accommodating rapid environmental changes. Understanding a species' capacity for behavioural plasticity is therefore a key, but understudied, aspect of developing tractable conservation and management plans under climate-change scenarios. Here, we quantified behavioural differences between American pikas (Ochotona princeps) living in an atypical, low-elevation habitat versus those living in a more-typical, alpine habitat.

When can we measure stress noninvasively? Postdeposition effects on a fecal stress metric confound a multiregional assessment.

Measurement of stress hormone metabolites in fecal samples has become a common method to assess physiological stress in wildlife populations. Glucocorticoid metabolite (GCM) measurements can be collected noninvasively, and studies relating this stress metric to anthropogenic disturbance are increasing. However, environmental characteristics (e.

Relating sub-surface ice features to physiological stress in a climate sensitive mammal, the American pika (Ochotona princeps).

The American pika (Ochotona princeps) is considered a sentinel species for detecting ecological effects of climate change. Pikas are declining within a large portion of their range, and ongoing research suggests loss of sub-surface ice as a mechanism. However, no studies have demonstrated physiological responses of pikas to sub-surface ice features.

The importance of biologically relevant microclimates in habitat suitability assessments.

Predicting habitat suitability under climate change is vital to conserving biodiversity. However, current species distribution models rely on coarse scale climate data, whereas fine scale microclimate data may be necessary to assess habitat suitability and generate predictive models. Here, we evaluate disparities between temperature data at the coarse scale from weather stations versus fine-scale data measured in microhabitats required for a climate-sensitive mammal, the American pika (Ochotona princeps).

A microfluidic device to investigate axon targeting by limited numbers of purified cortical projection neuron subtypes.

While much is known about general controls over axon guidance of broad classes of projection neurons (those with long-distance axonal connections), molecular controls over specific axon targeting by distinct neuron subtypes are poorly understood. Corticospinal motor neurons (CSMN) are prototypical and clinically important cerebral cortex projection neurons; they are the brain neurons that degenerate in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and related motor neuron diseases, and their injury is central to the loss of motor function in spinal cord injury. Primary culture of purified immature murine CSMN has been recently established, using either fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) or immunopanning, enabling a previously unattainable level of subtype-specific investigation, but the resulting number of CSMN is quite limiting for standard approaches to study axon guidance.

Estimating duration of infection with avidity assays: potential limitations and recommendations for improvement.

Recent infections often have higher pathogen loads. The number of recent infections can therefore be used to estimate transmission rates in a host population. Antibody avidity assays are an emerging technique to infer infection age in both domestic and wild animals.

Long-term patterns of immune investment by wild deer mice infected with Sin Nombre virus.

Immunocompetence of animals fluctuates seasonally, However, there is little consensus on the cause of these fluctuations. Some studies have suggested that these patterns are influenced by changes in reproductive condition, whereas others have suggested that differences result from seasonal variations in energy expenditures. The objective of our study was to examine these contrasting views of immunity by evaluating seasonal patterns of immune response and reproduction in wild populations of deer mice Peromyscus maniculatus exposed to Sin Nombre virus (SNV).