Browsing by Author "Gasteiger, Autumn"

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    Biotic Guild Diversity with Varying Stream Parameters
    (2010-03-16) Rittenhouse, David; Gasteiger, Autumn; Greenfield, Morgan; Thomes, Reggie
    The River Continuum Concept is a model that provides a framework for predicting many characteristics of a river or stream based off of its order. We examined three streams, the Mississippi River headwaters, a creek emerging from Mark Lake, and a iron spring that flows into Elk Lake, all with varying characteristics, but all headwaters of a streams found within Itasca State Park, MN. Physical properties of each stream were measured along with an assessment of the stream’s species richness found by looking at the richness of the biotic guilds of anuran, terrestrial invertebrates, benthic invertebrates, aquatic vegetation, emergent vegetation, and riparian vegetation. We found the Mississippi headwaters to have the highest species richness in all guilds but riparian vegetation, leading us to believe it to be a middle-order stream based of the characteristics described in the River Continuum Concept.
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    Diversity Within Small Mammal Communities of Forested Sites Around Itasca State Park and Nearby Prairie Sites
    (2010-11-30) Dexter, Sarah; Gasteiger, Autumn
    Different habitats provide a variety of niches in which organisms can live. These habitats have an influence on what types of animals can be found in certain areas. The objective here is to study mammal diversity in differing habitats in and around Itasca State Park, but concentrating on differences between forest and prairie environments. Six groups of students set up a grid in one of six areas, a bog, an aspen forest, burned and unburned deciduous forest, and burned and unburned red pine forest. Fifty-five traps were set, and all mammals caught were marked and recorded. Sixty-nine mammals were caught in the prairie locations, and 114 mammals were caught in the forest locations. The prairie locations captured eight different species, while the forest locations captured six different species. Three species were common to both locations. The ‘habitat heterogeneity hypothesis’ is one of the benchmarks for ecology. It considers that complex and structurally different habitats may provide more niches and diverse ways of exploiting the environmental resources, in turn increasing species diversity. In most habitats, plant communities determine the physical structure of the location and have a considerable influence on the distributions and interactions of animal species (J. Tews et al., 2004). The objective in our study is to examine the diversity of small mammals found within various forest habitats within or near Itasca State Park and to compare and contrast those communities with various prairie sites.
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    Quantitative and qualitative effects of Plains Pocket Gopher (Geomys bursarius) mound building on grassland vegetation in northwestern Minnesota.
    (2010-11-30) Harren, Steven; Gasteiger, Autumn; Kalmoe, Molly
    It has been shown from previous studies that Geomys bursarius (plains pocket gopher) can have both short and long term affects on vegetation associated with their mounds. Our goal was to observe some of the effects of the plains pocket gophers on vegetation in their habitat. To see the effects of gopher mounds we took random samples of unique vegetative patches, surveyed random transects for mounds, and assessed plant diversity on gopher mounds compared to control plots in an abandoned farm field near Itasca Stat Park, MN. Our data was compared to findings of previous studies of the same area. We found that 77% of unique vegetation was associated with mounds while 23% was not. Mounds covered 9.8% of the field and had an average of 6.7 different species of plants compared with 3.18 in control plots. From our data and a comparative analysis of the previous research, we concluded that mounding by gophers does have both short and long term effects on prairie vegetation and its diversity.