To date, there is a scant amount of research on the long-term benefits of exercise training for individuals with moderate to severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The purpose of this study was to evaluate standardized outcomes of a six-month maintenance pulmonary rehabilitation program to determine maintenance of functional capacity. Twenty-three subjects (sixteen men, seven women) diagnosed with clinical COPD ages 30-82 (65 + 12 years) participated in the retrospective study. The subjects were referred to an eight-week comprehensive pulmonary rehabilitation program after which upon twelve subjects continued onto a maintenance program. Eleven subjects chose not to participate in the maintenance program and were given a home exercise program and were encouraged to remain active. Hemodynamic, functional, and educational measures were taken prior to entry, upon completion of the hospital program, and again six-months post-program. Outcome tests were standardized using the Indiana Society of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation Outcomes Manual. Significantdifferences were found between the maintenance and non-maintenance groups for systolic blood pressure in resting, exercise, and recovery measures at six months reevaluation. Differences in oxygen saturation were also found to reach significance between the two groups during recovery from the six-minute walk test. Interestingly, duration of exercise was found to be statistically significant between the two groups as well as emergency room visits and physician visits within the last six months. The maintenance group tended to have fewer emergency room and physician visits in addition to having self-reported higher durations of exercise. In conclusion, maintenance pulmonary rehabilitation programs have been shown to maintain physical activity levels for COPD patients and as a result, fewer quality of life consequences specifically the number of hospital admissions and emergency room visits. / Department of Biology

External reproductive organs of spiders are often species-specific and are important taxonomic characters in species identification. One explanation of this phenomenon, the mechanical isolation hypothesis was tested in two Nuctenea (Araneidae) species. According to this hypothesis, a lock-and-key isolating mechanism should lead to character displacement (mechanical, ecological, or behavioral) between sympatric species with similar genitalia in order to prevent costly interspecific copulation attempts. Homologous external genitalia of male and female Nuctenea sclopetaria and N. patagiata were measured, The measurement means and variances were statistically compared to determine if character displacement was occurring between areas of sympatry and allopatry. Differences in both mean and variance were observed, but the number that differed between regions of sympatry and allopatry was not greater than the number that differed between adjacent regions of sympatry. Thus, these species failed to demonstrate the character displacement predicted by the mechanical isolation hypothesis. Data collected in the study were also used to test a hypothesis that spider genital features tend to be less variable than overall I size features, a hypothesis supported by an earlier study of the primitive spider Hypochilus. F-tests of coefficients of variation showed measurements of the Nuctenea genitalia to be more variable than first femur length. Differences in environmental pressures and genital complexity between Nuctenea and Hypochilus may explain this disparity. / Master of Science

Game theory models predict that individuals involved in contests adjust their strategy appropriate to the current value of the contested resource and the resource holding potential (RHP) of their opponent. In this investigation, I examined interactively operating, multiple contest asymmetries on dyadic disputes for precopulatory guarding positions in the crab spider Misumenoides formosipes. In contests between equally sized opponents with no previous contest experience, residents had clear advantages in fighting success over intruders. In the remaining two experiments, asymmetries in experience predicted outcome when tested against residency and size asymmetries. Data from this investigation suggest crab spiders learn strategies through experience rather than rely solely on the assessment of their opponent’s RHP before determining contest effort. / Department of Biology