Justin D. Hoffman, Advisor: Dr. Patricia W. Freeman. My dissertation research is an important contribution to the growing field of predictive habitat modeling in ecology. I investigate innovative approaches for evaluating the performance of different predictive habitat models and applying these methods to large scale ecological phenomena. Several predictive habitat models currently exist. It has been the focus of much research to determine which is the best model(s). However, much of this research is undermined by biased data sets. To resolve this issue, I tested model performance with simulated data that is not prone to the usual biases of real data sets. In general, my results support the findings of previous studies in that models that accurately predicted species distributions with real occurrence data also showed superior performance using simulated occurrence data. Using the conclusions from the model evaluation analysis as a basis, I applied these methods to two independent research questions. I first identified certain variables that best predicted the occurrence of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in Nebraska. Chronic wasting disease is a newly emerging infectious disease found only in members of the deer family (Family Cervidae). Analysis of several different combinations of spatial, temporal, and environmental variables showed that the chance of recording a positive CWD case was greater the more time spent sampling and when that sampling was conducted in western Nebraska. For the second question, I predicted range expansion among six North American mammals and ascertaining what role environmental variables have in predicting those expansions. I used two predictive habitat models combined with climate, land cover, and elevation variables to predict distributions. I predicted range expansions accurately for two of the six species, suggesting that other factors influenced the distributions of the remaining species. My results demonstrate the applicability of predictive habitat modeling in ecology and provide insights into novel methods of evaluating model performance.

"Community Drought Planning" Melissa Melvin, Advisor: Dr. Donald Wilhite

Techniques for Enhancing Efficacy of Oxialic Acid Treatments for Varroa destructor and an Investigation of Potential Negative Effects on Honey Bee Colony Members, Jeremy Wagnitz, Graduate Student, Department of Entomology

The Lincoln - Omaha Society of the Archaeological Institute of America announces its sixth and final lecture of the 2007 - 08 season. Dr. Francis Harrold, from the University of Nebraska at Kearney and Dean of the College of Natural and Social Sciences, will deliver a lecture on issues regarding the facts about—and misperceptions of—the Neanderthals. Among the most intriguing and controversial topics in Paleolithic archaeology are the eclipse of the archaic human populations in Eurasia that we know as the Neanderthals, and the rise of to dominance of "anatomically modern" humans. What were Neanderthals like? How was their behavior different from that of modern humans? What happened to them, and did modern people play a role in their fate? Professor Harrold will discuss how these questions are being tackled and debated with evidence from fields are varied as archaeology, human paleontology, paleoclimatology, and molecular genetics. Frank Harrold is Dean of the College of Natural and Social Sciences at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He received the B.A. in anthropology from Loyola University of Chicago and the M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago. Before coming to UNK, he taught at the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Victoria (Canada). His research interests are in the Paleolithic of Europe, particularly in the period of transition from the Neanderthals to modern humans. He has also written on nonscientific beliefs about the human past such as creationism and "fantastic archaeology." He has done fieldwork in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Albania, and is the author or co-author of over 40 scholarly books and articles.