1. The 9 th Annual Zoology and Botany Graduate Student Research Symposium Friday, March 24th, 2006 8am-3pm; reception following Talley Student Center, Blue Room You’re invited! The NC State Zoology and Botany Graduate Student Associations present 8:00 Breakfast, Green Room, Talley Student Center 8:30 Welcome and Opening Remarks 8:45 Emily Habinck Correlated leaf traits among Arabadopsis thaliana ecotypes 9:00 Veronica Miller Selected demography and population estimation of Trachemys scripta (yellow-bellied slider) in North Carolina as it relates to turtle harvesting 9:15 Jerome Brewster Singing rates of ovenbirds and black-throated blue warblers 9:30 Wenheng Zhang Gene duplication, selection, and rate of sequence evolution of PISTILLATA homologues in dogwoods 9:45 Brenda Wichmann Unique non-alluvial wetlands of the North Carolina Mountains and Piedmont-quantitative analysis with implications for management and protection 10:00 Morning Break 10:15 Wade Wall Vegetation of a North Carolina Coastal Plain Wet Savanna 10:30 Krishna Pacifici Effects of vegetation on the detection process in auditory avian point count surveys 10:45 Allison Leidner Using population genetic analyses to understand the impacts of habitat fragmentation on a rare butterfly 11:00 Scott Dobrin Axons to Glia: “You light up my life” 11:15 Tim Langer Private support is more than dollars, but those are nice too 11:30 Break Noon: Lunch, Lobby of David Clark Labs 1:00 Open-Forum Poster Presentations (see poster list) 1:30 Felix M. Del Toro-Silva Ecophysiology of fishes: interacting effects of oxygen and temperature on fish performance and nursery habitat quality 1:45 Shiloh Schulte Improved nest survival of American Oystercatchers on the Outer Banks of North Carolina: Effects of Hurricane Isabel 2:00 Caitlin Elam Flora and Plant Communities of Cool Springs Environmental Education Center, New Bern, North Carolina 2:15 Will Fields Incorporating rainfall data into survey planning and PVA for salamanders 2:30 Susan Pate May Impacts of the toxic dinoflagellate Alexandrum monilatum on three ecologically important shellfish species 2:45 Sunny Snider Species interactions affect movement rates of two exotic snail species 3:00 Closing Remarks and Rewards Reception following at 4 pm at the home of Nick Haddad, 406 Brooks Ave. POSTERS (on display 8:30 am to 3 pm) Christopher Butler Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus thynnus) feeding ecology and potential ecosystem effects during winter in North Carolina Sumie Okuwa How are terminal Schwann cells connected? Funded by the NCSU Department of Botany, Department of Zoology, Graduate School, UGSA, BGSA, ZGSA, and Student Senate For more information, contact Allison Leidner, akleidne@unity.ncsu.edu; or Caitlin Elam, caitlinelam@hotmail.com Becky Hylton Effects of acid deposition, calcium depletion, and mercury toxicity on high elevation Southern Applachian songbirds and land snails Nathan Tarr The effects of vehicle disturbance on shorebirds at Cape Lookout National Seashore