An introductory biology research-rich laboratory course shows improvements in students' research skills, confidence, and attitudes.

As part of a wider reform to scaffold quantitative and research skills throughout the biology major, we introduced course-based undergraduate research experiences (CURE) in sections of a large-enrollment introductory biology laboratory course in a mid-level, public, minority-serving institution. This initiative was undertaken as part of the in the National Science Foundation / Council for Undergraduate Research Transformations Project. Student teams performed two or three experiments, depending on semester.

The Weekend Effect on Urban Bat Activity Suggests Fine Scale Human-Induced Bat Movements.

In the urban environment, wildlife faces novel human disturbances in unique temporal patterns. The weekend effect describes that human activities on weekends trigger changes in the environment and impact wildlife negatively. Reduced occurrence, altered behaviors, and/or reduced fitness have been found in birds, ungulates, and meso-carnivores due to the weekend effect.

Rapid increases in bat activity and diversity after wetland construction in an urban ecosystem.

Wetland construction can mitigate the biodiversity and water quality losses associated with reduced natural wetland coverage. While beneficial effects of wetland construction for bats have been observed in natural and rural settings, the effects of wetland construction on bats in an urban ecosystem are less understood. We used passive acoustic monitoring to measure bat activity levels and diversity at two constructed wetlands and two control sites on the University of North Carolina Greensboro campus, in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA.

Ancient skeletal evidence for leprosy in India (2000 B.C.).

Background: Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae that affects almost 250,000 people worldwide. The timing of first infection, geographic origin, and pattern of transmission of the disease are still under investigation. Comparative genomics research has suggested M.

Evolution of mating isolation between populations of Drosophila ananassae.

Prezygotic mating isolation has been a major interest of evolutionary biologists during the past several decades because it is likely to represent one of the first stages in the transition from populations to species. Mate discrimination is one of the most commonly measured forms of prezygotic isolation and appears to be relatively common among closely related species. In some cases, it has been used as a measure to distinguish populations from subspecies, races, and sister species, yet the influences of various evolutionary mechanisms that may generate mate discrimination are largely unknown.

The genetic structure of Drosophila ananassae populations from Asia, Australia and Samoa.

Information about genetic structure and historical demography of natural populations is central to understanding how natural selection changes genomes. Drosophila ananassae is a widespread species occurring in geographically isolated or partially isolated populations and provides a unique opportunity to investigate population structure and molecular variation. We assayed microsatellite repeat-length variation among 13 populations of D.

Quantitative trait loci for sexual isolation between Drosophila simulans and D. mauritiana.

Sexual isolating mechanisms that act before fertilization are often considered the most important genetic barriers leading to speciation in animals. While recent progress has been made toward understanding the genetic basis of the postzygotic isolating mechanisms of hybrid sterility and inviability, little is known about the genetic basis of prezygotic sexual isolation. Here, we map quantitative trait loci (QTL) contributing to prezygotic reproductive isolation between the sibling species Drosophila simulans and D.

Directional evolution of size coupled with ascertainment bias for variation in Drosophila microsatellites.

Species-specific differences in microsatellite locus length and ascertainment bias have both been proposed to explain differences in microsatellite variability and length usually observed when loci isolated in one species are used to survey variation in a related species. Here we provide a simple algebraic approach to independently estimate the contributions of true species-specific length differences and ascertainment bias. We apply this approach to a reciprocal-isolation microsatellite study and show contributions of both ascertainment bias and a true longer average microsatellite length in Drosophila melanogaster compared with D.