Leveraging Applied Problems to Enhance the Undergraduate STEM Experience

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

Strong analytical skills and the ability to develop and analyze mathematical models are highly sought-after skills, especially when they are paired with the auxiliary skill set of strong scientific writing, the ability to collaborate across disciplines and effective visualizations of quantitative information. We focus on the development of these auxiliary skills by (1) offering training to teams who participate in COMAP’S Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) and (2) through the PIC Math course, a problem-solving course in which students work on problems provided by an industry client.

Light and Dark Assay Comparison of Selected Strains of Anabaena Sensory Rhodopsin

Miles Guillot, Chemistry Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

Anabaena Sensory Rhodopsin (ASR) is a retinal containing membrane protein from the cyanobacteria, Anabaena (Nostoc) PCC 7120. The ASR protein undergoes a conformational change upon absorption of orange light, which causes the all-trans-retinal to be converted to 13-cis retinal and the release of the associated transducer protein (ASRT). In order to facilitate future nanolipoprotein studies we examined the efficacy of the production of ASR in several selected recombinant strains of E. Coli through a light and dark spetrophotometric analysis of the purified ASR protein.

Likelihood of agonistic behavior by gull species in Humboldt County based on relative body size

Conor Somerville, Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

This project is a behavioral study on 4 gull species of Humboldt County. Their agonistic behavior was studied, comparing the frequency of agonistic behavior toward members of other species based on relative body-size. This value was compared with the number of birds of each relative size they had access to. I found that most gulls tended to target members of their own species disproportionately, but Western gulls disproportionately targeted members of other species that were larger and smaller in size. This may have implications on gull behavior and management.

Local Bat Activity in an Urban Context

BreeLynn Butler, Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

Several bat species can be observed in Humboldt County, including the Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis), hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), and big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus). The objectives of this study were to investigate what bat species occur on campus and how variables such as artificial light, weather, and lunar phase might influence bat activity. Ultrasonic acoustic recorders were deployed on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus to capture recordings of bat vocalizations. Additional data from the Arcata Community Forest during a previous year was used to compare the detected species in the forest in Spring 2019 to the detected species on campus in Spring 2025.

Lunar Illumination as an Indicator for Black-tailed Deer Activity

Austin Nolan, Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

This is a study that aims to test a widespread local theory that Black-tailed deer are more active on nights with a full moon.

Macroinvertebrate Abundance Decreases Waterfowl Diversity

Rachel Higuera , Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

The relationship between macroinvertebrate communities and waterfowl is still an understudied topic. I wanted to know how macroinvertebrate richness could influence waterfowl species and their abundance. I conducted my study at the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary, setting up random systematic sites 100 meters from each other. Each site was sampled for waterfowl point counts within a 50 meter radius and invertebrates were collected via D-net sweeps and a core sample. Invertebrates collected were then euthanized in 70% ethanol and identified to family in the lab. My results showed a negative correlation between macroinvertebrate abundance compared to waterfowl diversity.

Male Grouping Behavior in Giant Chacoan peccary

Finley Gralian, Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

A behavioral observation of captive male Chacoan peccaries at Sequoia Park Zoo to identify whether the males group by age, genetic relatedness, or personality.

Mammal presence in coastal foredunes dominated by European beachgrass.

Ethan Franco, Wildlife Undergraduate Student

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

My research project investigates the relationship between the invasive European beachgrass, Ammophila arenaria, and mammal presence in the foredunes of Gold Bluffs beach within Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.

Map of wildfire severity of the Santa Rosa: CA 2017

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

This study examines the Santa Rosa fire in 2017 using remote sensing techniques to estimate the acreage of burned areas. Landsat 8 imagery of the pre- and post- fires were used to extrapolate the burn severity using two methods: (i) Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) and (ii) change detection analysis. The results of burn severity of both methods were on average 24% under-approximated comparison to values supplied by Cal Fire. While comparing acreage burn, provided by CAL FIRE indicates that our results were on average 76% ±8% accuracy in identifying burn severity. Of the two methods, the change detection using iso clustered unsupervised classification scheme was more accurate.

Mapping Species Ranges in the California Floristic Province

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

The California Floristic Province (CFP) is a global hot-spot of biodiversity. Creating a database of plant distributions for the CFP is pivotal to define species’s conservation status. Students associated with the Herbarium used R to create precise polygons for the range of 62 species in the CFP. We accessed publicly occurrence repositories for our target species and used a protocol to remove outliers. Using these cleaned coordinates, we created polygons of the ranges and inferred the area in square kilometers. This information was used to create a preliminary histogram for CFP plant distribution, highlighting a high percentage of plant taxa with ranges smaller than Humboldt county.