{"id":1605,"date":"2024-01-26T20:14:51","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T20:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/?p=1605"},"modified":"2024-10-01T00:42:55","modified_gmt":"2024-10-01T00:42:55","slug":"congratulations-to-josh-pigeon-for-successfully-defending-his-msc-thesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/2024\/01\/26\/congratulations-to-josh-pigeon-for-successfully-defending-his-msc-thesis\/","title":{"rendered":"Congratulations to Josh Pigeon for successfully defending his MSc Thesis!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On January 17, MSc student Josh Pigeon presented on his thesis work titled &#8221; Cranial morphometrics of pine marten ( <em>Martes americana<\/em>) and weather during development. His work looked at analyzing morphometric measurements of marten skulls collected from Nordegg over a span of 20 years. Please see below for the abstract of his research and stay tuned for the upcoming publication. Congratulations on successfully defending\u00a0 Josh!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2024\/01\/PhotoMarten-1.png\">\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1606\" src=\"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2024\/01\/PhotoMarten-1-300x196.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"392\" height=\"256\" srcset=\"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2024\/01\/PhotoMarten-1-300x196.png 300w, https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2024\/01\/PhotoMarten-1-1024x669.png 1024w, https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2024\/01\/PhotoMarten-1-768x501.png 768w, https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2024\/01\/PhotoMarten-1-1536x1003.png 1536w, https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2024\/01\/PhotoMarten-1-1170x764.png 1170w, https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/51\/2024\/01\/PhotoMarten-1.png 2046w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 392px) 100vw, 392px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Abstract<\/strong>:\u00a0Globally, climate change is significantly affecting species in a myriad of ways. Rapid morphological change has been a proposed effect of climate change, but evidence is minimal. Furthermore, any such rapid morphological change is expected to involve a phenotypic response, i.e., phenotypic plasticity. Adaptive, neutral, and non-adaptive plasticity in the form of reaction norms and non-adaptive plasticity such as fluctuating asymmetry can provide insights into a population\u2019s ability to adapt to climate variability. I explored weather variation during critical developmental periods, because direct effects of weather variability would occur during periods of the development of young. Using geometric morphometrics, I explored patterns of covariation between morphological variation in a population of American pine marten (Martes americana) near Nordegg, Alberta, and variation in weather metrics when young are growing during prenatal (February-April) and postnatal (May-July) developmental periods. Analysis of variation in cranial morphology revealed significant covariation between symmetric morphological variation and weather metrics during early postnatal development. I did not find significant covariation between fluctuating asymmetry and weather during development. Our findings are congruent with similar studies, and point to both direct and indirect effects of \u201cclimate-induced\u201d weather variation, including the potential of a feeding ecology mechanism as an explanation for the covariation.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On January 17, MSc student Josh Pigeon presented on his thesis work titled &#8221; Cranial morphometrics of pine marten ( Martes americana) and weather during development. His work looked at analyzing morphometric measurements of marten skulls collected from Nordegg over&hellip; <br \/><a class=\"read-more-button\" href=\"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/2024\/01\/26\/congratulations-to-josh-pigeon-for-successfully-defending-his-msc-thesis\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1619,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1605"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1694,"href":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1605\/revisions\/1694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grad.biology.ualberta.ca\/boyce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}