Leaders of minority-owned businesses earn less revenue on average than their nonminority counterparts, even when both sets of leaders operate in the same industries. Among the factors leading to this earnings discrepancy is the lack of access that leaders of minority-owned businesses have to high-revenue opportunities. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the strategies that some leaders of minority-owned small businesses use to compete for contracts in high-revenue industries. The study population comprised 3 owners of minority-owned small marketing consultancy firms headquartered in the Southeastern United States. Teece and Pisano’s dynamic capabilities view served as the conceptual framework for this study. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and the review of company documents. The data analysis process included member checking to ensure credibility of the interpretation of the information gathered during the interviews, and methodological triangulation of the data sources to establish data validity. Four themes emerged from the analysis: positioning and targeting, capabilities and competencies, pricing and returns, and relevancy and longevity. The themes are critical success factors for competing for contracts in high-revenue industries and may be beneficial to the leaders of minority-owned small businesses in seeking contracts in similar or parallel industries. Leaders who apply the study findings may earn incremental revenues to effect positive social change through additional job creation and community development activities, benefiting local economies and residents.

The town of St. Joseph, established in 1835, served as an important deep-water port for receiving and shipping dry goods up the Apalachicola River north along the vast network of navigable inland waterways in southeastern U.S. during the early nineteenth century. Unfortunately, this town was hit with a yellow fever epidemic and a series of hurricanes that, combined with the infancy of its cotton trade activities, eventually devastated its economy and population. The town disappeared by 1842, only much later to be replaced by modern Port St. Joe (est. 1909), located north of the original settlement. However, St. Joseph's influence upon Florida's economy was paramount. It hosted Florida's first constitutional convention, where the first five constitutions were drafted. Despite St. Joseph's historical gravity, little was known about its economic impact to Florida; much of its history is shrouded in folklore. Recently a large artifact collection from St. Joseph was made available for professional research. The collector invited me to document the materials and do the first archaeological investigation of this lost town. This research also utilizes the material culture to examine questions of early nineteenth-century capitalism and consumer behavior.

Numerous studies have evaluated the relationship between biodiversity and productivity, with general trends suggesting a positive relationship. While most studies only use species richness, this study also analyzed how productivity changes with functional diversity and Shannon’s diversity index. Functional diversity gives important context to the examination of biodiversity-productivity relationships due to the direct link between organisms’ functional traits and their role in a given ecosystem. This study used data from the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) database collected in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi to estimate plot-level productivity and diversity. Structural equation modeling was used to determine the strength of the relationship between measures of diversity and forest productivity. This study found that species richness had the greatest influence on forest productivity, but it was largely an indirect effect mediated by stand density. This study could be expanded spatially to include more forest types for comparison of trends.

Among exotic species that are capable of invading, establishing, and reaching pest status, few pose the range of impacts to biotic (e.g., competition with native species, predation, herbivory, introduction of other exotics) and abiotic (e.g., soil, hydrology) ecosystem components that can be attributed to the wild pig (Sus scrofa). Despite the presence of wild pigs throughout the southeastern United States for centuries, new invasions continue to occur in previously uninhabited and often under-investigated landscapes, including bottomland and upland forests. The recent invasion of the Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge (hereafter, NNWR) in east-central Mississippi represents an opportunity to understand not only a species invasion during an emergent stage, but also to improve and better inform the methods used to combat such species in forested landscapes. In recent years, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has begun to observe direct impacts to this ecologically sensitive area which is critically important to not only migratory waterfowl but also a multitude of other faunal (e.g., amphibians, reptiles, and avian species of concern) and floral species. As a result, identifying wild pig spatial distributions (e.g., movements, occurrence) and estimating wild pig abundance in the NNWR have each increased in priority. My dissertation research has facilitated an improved understanding of how wild pigs have invaded this novel landscape through investigations of space use, abundance, and occurrence, and will better inform and improve efficiency of future monitoring and control efforts. Understanding how this wild pig invasion relates to the NNWR landscape may also provide information that can be used to better address wild pig invasions of similar landscapes, with added value for those that are similarly characterized by sensitive ecosystems (i.e., managed for migratory waterfowl, species of concern) that are currently faced with this emerging threat. Given the universality of many of the methodological approaches undertaken in this effort, this multifaceted investigation also provides broader implications for other landscapes and exotic species of interest.

Understanding how migration, genetic drift, and natural selection interact to maintain the genetic and phenotypic variation we observe in natural populations is a central goal of population genetics. Amphibians provide excellent model organisms for investigating the interplay between these evolutionary forces because amphibians are generally characterized by limited dispersal abilities, high philopatry, and are obligately associated with the areas around suitable habitats (e.g. breeding ponds). Thus, on relatively small geographic scales, the relative effects of all of these evolutionary forces can be studied together. Here, we study the interaction of migration, genetic drift, natural selection, and historical process in the ornate chorus frog (Pseudacris ornata). We report the development and characterization of 10 polymorphic microsatellite genetic markers. Number of alleles per locus ranged from 2 to 21 averaging 9.2 and expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.10 to 0.97 averaging 0.52. However, in an analysis of two populations, three locus-by-population comparisons exhibited significant heterozygote deficiencies and indicated that null alleles may be present some loci. Furthermore, we characterized genetic structure and historical biogeographic patterns in P. ornata using these microsatellite markers along with mitochondrial DNA sequence data. Our data indicate that in these frogs, migration may play a large role in determining population structure as pairwise estimates of FST were relatively small ranging from 0.04 to 0.12 (global FST = 0.083). Additionally, we observed an overall pattern of isolation-by-distance in neutral genetic markers across the species range. Moreover, our data suggest that the Apalachicola River basin does not impede gene flow in P. ornata as it does in many vertebrate taxa. Interestingly, we identified significant genetic structure between populations separated by only 6 km. However, this fine scale genetic structure was only present in the more urbanized of two widespread sampling localities. Finally, in this study, we demonstrated that there was a significant correlation between the frequency of green frogs and latitude. There was a higher frequency of green frogs in southern samples and a lower frequency of green frogs in northern samples. However, when we interpreted this phenotypic cline in light of the overall pattern of isolation-by-distance, it was apparent that the neutral evolutionary forces of genetic drift and migration could explain the cline, and the invocation of natural selection was not necessary.