The UTC Graduate School is pleased to announce that Jeremiah Rhodes will present Master's research titled, Analyzing Diversity In Urban and Rural Wetlands Using Frog Call Citizen Science Data on 03/21/2024 at 9:00 am in University Center room 359. Everyone is invited to attend. 

Environmental Science

Chair: Dr. Thomas Wilson

Co-Chair: 

Abstract:

Citizen science is the incorporation of citizens in data collection or management of scientific research. The Tennessee Amphibian Monitoring Program (TAMP) is a citizen science program, at the state-level that conducts manual calling surveys all over Tennessee. Amphibians are currently experiencing a crisis of high extinction rates because of habitat destruction, and climate change. The TAMP data set was analyzed to see if there was a difference in diversity and abundance of anurans in urban wetlands compared to rural wetlands in the Ridge and Valley ecoregion. A Hutchenson’s t-test and a Mann-Whitney U test found that the diversity scores of the two groups were not equal, with the rural wetlands having significantly higher diversity than the urban wetlands. Occupancy modeling found that occupancy scores of species varied between the two treatment habitats. Rural wetlands appear to contain more sensitive and rarer anurans.