A Pleistocene lava tube cave in southeast Oregon has a seasonally fluctuating lake occupying the last 1200 to 2000 feet. Three endemic invertebrate species inhabit the lake: Kenkia rynchida Hyman; Asellus sp.; and stygobromus hubbsi. Shoemaker. Little is known however, about their environment. The purpose of this study was to describe various physical and chemical parameters of Malheur Cave Lake.

The Sucker Creek Formation exposures at Devils Gate in southeastern Oregon have yielded a significant small mammal fauna of at least thirty small mammal taxa from five stratigraphic horizons. The mammal-bearing portion of the Devils Gate section is more than 200 m thick. Fossil mammals occur in lacustrine and marginal lacustrine deposits lower in the section and occur in overbank and paleosol deposits higher in the section. ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar single-crystal laser-fusion dates on three Devils Gate ashes shows that the age of the mammal-bearing sequence at Devils Gate spans the late early Barstovian land-mammal age with possible overlap into the late Barstovian, as currently defined. Duration of the entire mammal-bearing portion of the Devils Gate section was less than a million years. Both a new ash date from the type section and biostratigraphic correlations between Devils Gate and the type section support considerable temporal overlap between the two exposures. The Devils Gate Local Fauna includes several new taxa: a phyllostomatid bat; two "flying squirrels", Petauristodon sp. A and Petauristodon sp. B; and an eomyid rodent, Leptodontomys sp. A. Several fossil occurrences represent the first record of a taxon in the northern Great Basin and/or in the Barstovian land-mammal age, including: Blackia sp., Schaubeaumys grangeri, Protospermophilus quatalensis, and Pseudadjidaumo stirtoni. The Stagestop locality produced two new taxa, Copemys sp. aff C. esmeraldensis and Mystipterus sp. The Stagestop local fauna is Clarendonian in age. Concretions are an important source of fossil mammals in exposures of the Sucker Creek Formation. Geochemical analyses show that concretions formed through a complex interaction between bone and surrounding volcaniclastic material. Although some superficial bone was consumed during concretion diagenesis, concretion development reduced the chance of prolonged chemical and physical destruction of bone during later soil development. The broad ecological diversity of small mammals recovered from Devils Gate supports an interpretation of the local paleoecology as a mosaic of grassland, forest, and pond/lake-bank environments. Sequential small mammal faunas across a prominent ash event show a generally stable composition with no pronounced ecomorphic differences in pre- and post-volcanic disturbance intervals. Therefore, small mammals do not show analogous ecological patterns to disturbance-driven plant successions in the Sucker Creek Formation. I infer that the local ecosystem recovered from volcanic blasts at a temporal scale below the resolution of time-averaged, post-disturbance paleosols.

This study examines in detail the various aspects of the segmentation process as applied by Obrecht and Josquin to the chanson Malheur me bat, especially the effect of this process on the structure of each composer's respective mass. Although musical aspects such as cadences and mode have varying degrees of influence on the structure of these two masses, the primary influence is the establishment of proportional relationships that occur as a result of the segmentation process. Sources of previous music research frequently point out that Obrecht's Mass utilizes both the Phrygian and Aeolian modes, while in Josquin's Mass the Phrygian mode is the firmly established mode throughout. Since segments in Obrecht's Mass are usually not connected to one another, strong cadences frequently occur at the end of the segments throughout. On the other hand, since the segments in Josquin's Mass are usually connected to one another, weak internal cadences frequently occur throughout, with strong cadences reserved for the end of sections.

Eastern Kingbirds (Tyrannus tyrannus) breed from coast to coast in North America and build open-cup nests in trees. They have been extensively studied across most of their range and have only on occasion been documented to reuse a nest from a previous season. However, at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR), located in southeastern Oregon, ~10 % of female Eastern Kingbirds reuse old nests of mainly American Robins (Turdus migratorius). In an attempt to address why nest reuse is so common at MNWR, I used artificial nests to evaluate two hypotheses as to why nest reuse is common in this breeding population. The first hypothesis states that Eastern Kingbirds reuse nests to save time and/or energy (TES) and the second one states nest reuse occurs because there is a shortage of suitable nest sites (NSS). I was able to reject the TES hypothesis because artificial nests provided no apparent reproductive benefits to Eastern Kingbirds, except that if a nest had failed it took less time to lay a replacement clutch after an initial failure if an artificial nest was used instead of building a new nest. A more reasonable explanation is that Eastern Kingbirds face a limited availability of suitable nest sites. With this in mind, I took vegetation measurements to address the hypothesis that Eastern Kingbirds make adaptive choices when selecting a nest site, in which case they would choose sites that increase their probability of breeding successfully. Successful nests, both natural and artificial, were placed higher in a tree and on a steeper angled nest branch than their failed counterparts. Those findings suggest that Eastern Kingbirds make adaptive choices when selecting a nest site.

The events of the Bunkerville standoff and the Malheur wildlife refuge occupation were both important confrontations with the government by the western land rights movement. Participants in and responders to the events engage in distinct moral judgments and rationales. Utilizing cultural schema analysis and moral foundations theory (MFT), I explored the differences in rationales and judgments made by participants and responders in their explicit, public moral discourses of both events. My analysis indicates that responders and participants defined and utilized the same moral foundations, but in distinct ways. Participants were more diverse in their invocation of moral foundations while responders centralized on judgments/rationales centered on harm/care and authority/subversion. I argue that the insights of content differences in construction/usage of moral foundations are a key contribution to the literature and usage of MFT. I further argue that future research on moral judgments utilizing MFT should endeavor to specify the moral and rational content of how moral foundations are employed, rather than simply documenting their distributions.

No description available.

This methodological study is an attempt to develop relative chronologies for surface archaeological sites from the obsidian hydration analysis of waste flake samples. Two sites in southeastern Oregon were selected and their surface components sampled. The results of the obsidian hydration analysis indicate, that with the use of random sampling methods and general geochemical control, a fairly accurate representation of the history of an archaeological surface site can be obtained.

This dissertation presents the results of a study that I undertook to better understand the breeding biology of Eastern Kingbirds (hereafter, kingbirds) at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon from 2003 to 2009. Kingbirds are long-distance migratory songbirds that breed across much of North America. This species is socially monogamous but, via frequent extra-pair copulations, is genetically polygamous. Kingbirds exhibit relatively high breeding site fidelity, often returning to the same tree to nest in subsequent years. Both members of a pair provide parental care, but there are often specific duties performed by both male and female kingbirds. For example, males typically perform much of the vigilant nest defense that this species is well known for and contribute, to an extent, to the feeding of nestlings. Females, on the other hand, are entirely responsible for incubating and brooding. Beginning in 2002, most adults within the population of kingbirds at Malheur had been banded with a unique combination of three colored plastic leg bands and an aluminum USFWS band. Also, as many nests were located in each year as possible, and any young that survived to fledging age were banded with a unique combination of leg bands. Considerable effort was then spent each year to locate as many banded individuals as possible, which allowed me to document adult and juvenile survival. Annual survival rates of adult male and female kingbirds in the population at Malheur did not differ and were relatively high at approximately 0.65. Juvenile survival rate was approximately 0.29, indicating that slightly less than one-third of nestlings survive the interval between fledging and their first potential breeding season. Resighting probability was high for both sexes, although higher for adult males (0.94) than for adult female (0.84). The latter finding is consistent with the higher site fidelity of males than of females. Resighting probabilities for juveniles were much lower at 0.68 and 0.40 for males and females, respectively. Again, this was expected because natal site fidelity is typically much lower than breeding site fidelity. Compared to most other reports, resighting probability and return rates of juvenile kingbirds was high, presumably because the riparian habitats where kingbirds breed at Malheur function as an ecological island surrounded by, for kingbirds, unsuitable high desert habitat. Thus, unless they disperse very long distances, the only option for juvenile kingbirds is to begin nesting on the refuge. The collection of blood samples from birds has become an increasingly common practice in ornithology. The data that can be gained from these samples allow a number of interesting questions to be asked such as understanding the genetic mating system of a species, patterns of hormone secretion, and discerning migratory pathways via stable isotope analysis. The volume of blood collected is usually small and was assumed to cause no long-term negative effects on sampled individuals. However, few studies have rigorously examined the effect of blood sampling on survival. I used a multistate mark-recapture analysis to assess the effect blood sampling on annual survival of kingbirds by combining the annual survival data described above with whether or not individuals were subjected to blood sample collection. The results of this analysis indicated that blood sampling had no effect on annual survival rates of kingbirds. Whether or not this is the case for other species remains to be seen. However, my results support the assumption that when done correctly, blood sampling has little to no long-term negative effects on birds. Comparative analyses of many bird species show that testosterone secretion exhibits fairly predictable patterns among breeding birds of different mating systems. Monogamous species reach a peak during mate attraction and the period of female fertility which is then followed by a sharp decline when young are in the nest. By contrast, males of polygynous species tend to maintain higher levels of testosterone throughout the breeding season to, presumably, maximize opportunities for acquiring additional mates. Kingbirds are socially monogamous but cryptically polygamous. However, because of high rates of extra-pair paternity, variation in reproductive success among males is much higher than what is expected for a monogamous species, and, instead, is similar to what has been reported for polygynous species. Therefore from 2005 to 2009 I measured testosterone concentrations from the blood samples collected from male kingbirds to determine the breeding season profile of testosterone secretion in kingbirds and to understand the factors that influence testosterone variation among individuals. Contrary to expected for a monogamous species, the testosterone profile of kingbirds did not exhibit the brief peak in testosterone followed by a precipitous decline. Testosterone peaked early in the season, but declined very slowly as the nest cycle progressed. I attributed this gradual decline in testosterone to the cryptically polygynous nature of the kingbird extra-pair mating system. I also found substantial variation in testosterone concentration among male kingbirds and was able to identify several factors contributing to this variation. As expected, testosterone declined as the breeding season progressed (independent of stage in nest cycle) and nest density increased, while increases in testosterone were correlated with the number of fertile females within the population. This suggests that male kingbirds were capable of modulating testosterone concentrations to both cope with an increase in conspecific density, but also to ready themselves for times when extra-pair copulations were more likely.

We have been studying the population of Eastern Kingbirds breeding in riparian habitats in Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (eastern Oregon) since 2002. These efforts have created an ideal research environment wherein most adults in the population have been color banded and DNA sampled and, as part of other research projects, nearly all broods since 2003 have been paternity tested. I decided to use behavioral video recordings of parental nest behavior undertaken between 2003 and 2010 for two unrelated projects. First, I tested the effectiveness of video sampling nesting behavior (see below and chapter 2). Second, I tested whether male kingbirds were able to affect their level of paternal investment in accordance with their level or realized paternity (see below and chapter 3). Chapter 2 was split into three distinct questions: 1) are parental nesting behaviors repeatable, 2) is a one hour sample sufficient to capture variability in these behaviors, and 3) is the first hour of recording sufficient to capture variability in these behaviors. I found overwhelming evidence that the behaviors I measured were repeatable. This is truly important, for if repeatability was disproven, it would call into question the use of sampling throughout the field of animal behavior. I similarly found strong evidence that a one hour sample was sufficient to capture variability in parental behaviors. From this I was able to suggest that further sampling effort would be better spent increasing sample size rather than observation length. Testing whether the first hour of recording was sufficient to capture variability in parental behavior found more muddled results. While there generally was correlation between behavioral values in the first hour and those over a longer observation period, most behaviors were found to have significantly lower values in the first hour. I tested whether this was the result of a lingering observer effect or a natural effect of time of day and concluded that an observer effect was the more likely explanation. In chapter 3, I ran one of the more in depth and complicated tests for a relationship between paternal investment and realized paternity that I was able to find in the literature. I used the standard male feeding rate as a measure of male investment as well as a far more nuanced measure derived from the first Eigenvector of an analysis of six different paternal behaviors. These were both tested using Akaike's Information Criterion against a number of variables likely to affect parental behavior, including realized paternity. Ultimately, I found no evidence that kingbirds were able to affect paternal investment in response to lost paternity, and conclude that they likely had no means to assess realized paternity within the nest of their social mate. However, from the other parameters tested I was able to find that males increased their investment as brood size increased and as the female spent more time attending, but not feeding, the nestlings. Also, male investment decreased as territory density increased and flight feather length increased. Theory surrounding the variability of extrapair paternity in birds can be used to account for these results. In a denser population males are predicted to reduce paternal effort for one of two reasons: increased likelihood of paternity loss in his own nest and an increased investment in pursuing extrapair copulations of his own. Longer flight feathers are a sign of age and quality in kingbirds, so males with this trait are expected to spend more time pursuing extrapair copulations as they are more likely to be successful in this endeavor.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T19:20:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alexandre Andrade Martins.pdf: 1254174 bytes, checksum: f38b6c9e9239ee5ff690c54afd9a42ae (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-06-01 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Simone Weil, French philosopher of the first half of the 20th century, died young, 34 years old, but she had a deeply experience marked of the commitment with the philosophical study in the search for truth and by solidarity with the oppressed. She was faithful to her existential and philosophical purpose. She felt in her flesh the degraded suffering of existence and she felt touched by God s grace in which she found the truth and reason of love to sufferers. This suffering touches all dimensions of human existence, she called malheur. Our study is about how malheur and the grace are present in the life and thought of Simone Weil from letters and essays that she wrote and which are in the book Attente de Dieu. We tried to understand these two categories and we notice that they are concepts articulated philosophically that allow us to make a link between what Simone Weil lived and thought. Malheur and grace are worked in a conceptual and experiential form. They have in their bases the real life and the philosophical argument. We started understanding Simone s work and the elucidation of important moment of her life. After we showed the understanding of her letters and essays. We concluded that the concepts of malheur and grace are fundamental categories in the religious-philosophical thought of Simone Weil and they do a link between religious experience, philosophical knowledge and existential practice / Simone Weil, filósofa francesa de primeira metade do século XX, morreu ainda muito jovem, aos 34 anos, mas teve uma experiência profundamente marcada pelo comprometimento com o estudo filosófico na busca pela verdade e pela solidariedade com os mais oprimidos do seu tempo. Sendo fiel aos seus propósitos filosóficos e existenciais, sentiu na própria carne o sofrimento degradante da existência e, nele, sentiu ser tocada pela graça de Deus, encontrado a verdade e a razão do amor aos sofredores. Esse sofrimento que afeta todas as dimensões da existência humana, ela chamou de malheur. Nosso estudo é sobre como o malheur e a graça estão presentes na vida e no pensamento de Simone Weil a partir de cartas e opúsculos que escreveu e estão reunidos no livro Attente de Dieu. Buscamos compreender essas duas categorias e percebemos que elas são conceitos articulados filosoficamente e que permitem fazermos uma conexão entre o que viveu e pensou. Malheur e graça são trabalhados de forma experiencial e conceitual, de tal forma que eles têm por base a concretude da vida e a argumentação filosófica. O caminho seguido parte da compreensão da obra de Simone e da elucidação de importantes momentos da sua vida, depois apresentamos a compreensão das cartas e dos opúsculos. Isso permitiu chegarmos à conclusão de que os conceitos de malheur e de graça são categorias fundamentais no pensamento religioso-filosófico de Simone Weil e que elas fazem uma conexão entre experiência religiosa, conhecimento filosófico e prática existencial