Trent University

Measuring biodiversity has become increasingly complex as biologists and ecologists have gradually learned more about how biotic systems are structured and interact. Given the wide range of tools, techniques and approaches now in use to quantify biological diversity, it is useful to consider different "dimensions of diversity" to classify these measurements and provide context for their interpretation. Even within the genetic dimension of diversity alone, recent improvements in theory, technology, and statistics has generated several approaches which can provide distinct insights into natural systems. In this thesis, I use multiple "axes of diversity" to subdivide the dimension of genetic diversity to better understand a complex ecological system - the unisexual Ambystoma complex on Pelee Island, Ontario. By focusing on the genomotype axis, I found that the composition of local unisexual Ambystoma assemblages generally reflects the current relative abundance of the local sexual host populations. This suggests that sexual hosts can be thought of as a keystone species for the complex not only because they are required for unisexual Ambystoma to reproduce, but also because their relative abundance governs the composition of entire unisexual Ambystoma assemblages. Comparatively, when assessing the lineage axis of genetic diversity, unisexual Ambystoma assemblage diversity patterns primarily reflected historic landscape structure, and spatial patterns of increased lineage richness were linked to areas where both potential hosts were locally available (currently or historically). Thus, while both of the investigated axes of diversity are forms of genetic diversity, each revealed distinct factors that have shaped contemporary diversity patterns across the landscape operating at different spatial and temporal scales. Critically, our understanding of complex ecological systems is likely to be broadened by including additional axes of diversity (e.g., allelic, loci, or chromosomal structure axes), and such investigations are not limited to clonal hybrid systems. Overall, this work illustrates the importance of combining insights from distinct conceptual and analytical toolkits to generate a comprehensive understanding of the factors which have shaped the patterns of diversity we observe today.

Author Keywords: Biological diversity, Dimensions of diversity, Ecological genetics, Metacommunity ecology, Unisexual Ambystoma

This is a community-based research project investigating the ability to meet a vision of co-governance. This dissertation investigates the effectiveness of the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board (YESAB) as a treaty-implementing institution under Chapter 12 of the Umbrella Final Agreement (UFA). The UFA, a modern treaty between Yukon First Nations (YFNs), Canada, and the Yukon, outlines a vision for co-governance, environmental stewardship, and sustainable development. Established under the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act (YESAA), YESAB was designed to operationalize this vision through a Development Assessment Process that integrates Indigenous participation and cultural values into decision-making on development projects. Guided by three core research questions, the study assesses: (1) how well YESAB fulfills the spirit and intent of Chapter 12 of the UFA; (2) the strengths and weaknesses of its impact assessment processes, particularly in terms of inclusivity, responsiveness, and environmental integrity; and (3) the influence of other institutions and actors on YESAB's capacity to fulfill its treaty-mandated responsibilities. This study used a community-based participatory research framework and Constructive Grounded Theory methodology. Information was collected through a selected documentary analysis as well as interviews with 35 individuals with direct experience in Yukon's impact assessment system—including past/present YFN Self-Government officials, past/present YESAB staff, territorial regulators, Yukon-based NGOs, legal experts, and proponents. The findings reveal that while YESAB has made procedural strides—such as improved transparency and research depth—it continues to face structural and epistemic challenges that limit its ability to meaningfully implement the UFA's goals. These include inadequate incorporation of Traditional Knowledge, limited capacity and follow-up, and external interference from other regulatory bodies. Furthermore, participants emphasized that the Development Assessment Process is often constrained by outdated mining legislation, political pressures, and jurisdictional fragmentation. This research contributes to scholarly and policy discussions on Indigenous governance, treaty implementation, and environmental justice in Canada. It recommends specific legislative and institutional reforms to enhance YESAB's effectiveness and align its operations with the UFA's original intent. Ultimately, the dissertation underscores the need for an impact assessment system that is co-governed, culturally grounded, and responsive to both ecological and Indigenous priorities in the Yukon.

Keywords: Impact Assessment, treaty implementation, resource extraction, Yukon, Indigenous Rights, colonization, spirit and intent, Umbrella Final Agreement, Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Board, co-management, Traditional Knowledge

Author Keywords: Impact Assessment, Indigenous Rights, resource extraction, treaty implementation, Yukon, Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Board

Frog virus 3 (FV3) belongs to the genus Ranavirus within the Iridoviridae family.Its 105,903 base genome encodes 98 open reading frames (ORFs), including ORF 97R, a putative apoptosis regulator sharing 31% structural similarity with the anti-apoptotic Bcl- 2 family protein, myeloid cell leukemia 1 (Mcl-1). 97R contains a BH1 domain, implicated in apoptosis regulation, and a predicted C-terminal transmembrane domain, which acts as a membrane-anchoring domain, localizing 97R to the ER membrane. To study its role in host cell modulation, 97R was cloned into a vector and transfected into HeLa cells. Immunofluorescence revealed a time-dependent decrease in Protein Disulfide Isomerase (PDI) in 97R-transfected cells. Immunoprecipitation and western blotting revealed that 97R interacts with Prohibitin 1 (PHB1), a host protein involved in apoptosis regulation. This research provides insight into the novel functional role of 97R in host cells, enhancing our understanding of how FV3 may manipulate its host.

Author Keywords: Bcl-2 protein family, frog virus 3, Iridoviridae, ORF 97R, Protein-protein interactions, Ranavirus

An interesting question arises upon viewing the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz (MGM). The main character Dorothy Gale faces a long arduous journey on foot. Why did she not have a car? Women had formed strong associations with the automobile in its early years, yet they appeared to have weaker associations with the automobile a few decades later. A look back to three other "Dorothies" from the World War I era demonstrates the evolution of women's associations with the early automobile, and how war impacted them. In the pre-World War I years, women drivers appeared in film, while Dorothy Levitt wrote columns for other women on how to drive and repair a car and many other women invented safety technologies for automobiles. During World War I, the pinnacle of recognition for women's driving emerged with the woman ambulance drivers on the front lines. Dorothie Feilding was one of the first women to arrive in Belgium to drive ambulances, often while under fire. Feilding and many women like her were given war medals for their service, and their bravery was touted in newspapers. However, once the war ended, their accomplishments would be erased and ignored. In the post-World War I years, Dorothée Pullinger's experience as CEO of the Galloway factory illustrate how ideas of masculinity and femininity. promoted by governments after the war, impacted women. The Galloway factory in Tongland Scotland, was staffed by women engineers and workers. After World War I ended, these women were pushed out of their jobs. War-induced disability and its economic costs to governments were at the heart of gender inequities and served to displace women from automobile technology. Policies such as Britain's "Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act" set the stage for a script that constructed women's jobs as expendable and marketed ideas of the disabled soldier needing to "re-gain his manliness" by re-entering the labour force at women's expense. As a result, the state imbued a new relational, gendered analytic onto automobile use and production that remains with western society today. Keywords: woman's labour, woman driver, automobile, factory labour, gendered technology, World War I, ambulance, silent film, Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act, Galloway, Tongland, First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, Munro Flying Ambulance Corps, Dorothy Levitt, Dorothie Feiling, Dorothée Pullinger.

Author Keywords: ambulance, automobile, Galloway, gendering, women, world war I

Wildlife translocation programs are widely employed as a strategy to reintroduce extirpated species into regions they once inhabited but no longer do. Reintroduction programs can be successful at re-establishing extirpated populations and also provide unique opportunities to study post-reintroduction population dynamics and behavioural ecology. The wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is a forest generalist species that, prior to European colonization, inhabited much of the Carolinian zone in Ontario. This species was hunted to extirpation in the early 1900's and reintroduced in the mid-1980's through a series of wildlife trade agreements and coordinated trap and transfer efforts. Ontario's contemporary populations are seemingly thriving, with wild turkey harvest permitted in many regions of the province. However, given this species history of extirpation, understanding the size, distribution, and behavioural ecology of Ontario's reintroduced population of wild turkeys is essential to their long-term persistence in the province. We captured and radio-tagged 77 wild turkeys over four years in Peterborough, Ontario and studied their movement, sociality, and habitat preferences. My findings indicate that Ontario may contain relatively high densities of this species when compared with other parts of their range. My analyses also elucidated interesting aspects of this species habitat selection patterns within an anthropogenic landscape, in addition to novel findings surrounding wild turkey sociality and genetic structure.

Author Keywords: behaviour, genetics, Ontario, reintroduction, wild turkey, wildlife management

Heterogeneous environments impose discordant selective pressures on natural populations, where disparate biotic/abiotic factors and variable population connectivity, yield mosaic patterns of genetic variation on the landscape. The ability to maintain or change genetic mosaics of populations becomes key to persistence, as species increasingly need to adapt to rapidly changing environmental and human-associated selective pressures. Specifically, infectious diseases can impose strong and rapid selective pressures on populations, where anthropogenic disruptions of co-evolutionary patterns and altered distributions of hosts and pathogens exacerbate disease risk. Genomic tools provide means to evaluate disease-associated impacts on the genetic landscape of host populations and facilitate implementation of informed conservation efforts. In this thesis, I evaluate disease dynamics in: 1) a long-standing arctic rabies/arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) system affected by influxes of red fox (V. vulpes), and 2) an invasive bat pathogen system, where the North American introduction of Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd) has had variable impacts on bat species and populations. In these systems, signatures of host selection were estimated from temporal and spatial shifts in allelic diversity within genomic regions associated with immune response, highlighting different host mechanisms to enzootic and invasive diseases. In the arctic rabies/fox system, pathogen variants did not influence red fox local disease responses, reflecting more recent expansions of this host to Arctic regions. In contrast, arctic fox revealed genomic patterns consistent with long-term, co-evolutionary processes. In Pd/bat systems, genomic evidence supported the hypothesis that eastern small-footed bats (Myotis leibii) were inherently resistant or tolerant to Pd, the causative agent of white-nose syndrome (WNS). In contrast, WNS-impacted little brown bat (M. lucifugus) populations had varied genomic impacts subsequent to strong selective sweeps from disease. My research illustrates how immunogenetic profiling, in context of demographic processes inferred from neutral genetics, enhances understanding of the varied impacts of changing disease landscapes on host populations/species; insights relevant to other host-pathogen systems. Building on this thesis, future explorations of low coverage genomes, host-imposed reciprocal selection, and impacts on methylation, transcriptomic and proteomic patterns associated with shifts in genetic diversity, would enable more holistic understanding of the geographic mosaics within these disease systems.

Author Keywords: Disease Dynamics, High-throughput Sequencing, Immune System, Natural Selection, Population Genetics, Reduced Representation Sequencing

Since the 1960s, post-secondary institutions (PSIs) across Chi'Mikinak (the Great Turtle) have been learning how to engage with Indigenous Knowledge Holders and their knowledges in academic programs and research, to decolonize, to support Indigenous-led initiatives, and make systemic, transformative, and reconciliatory change. This work explores what practices support and nurture Indigenous autonomy in relation to Indigenous Knowledge systems in four Canadian, Indigenous-focused post-secondary education (PSE) programs. It considers how to embody and activate these practices as individuals and institutionally, as well as the issues, tensions, opportunities, and prospects for doing so. Co-learning and co-creating are possible. However, Indigenous autonomy (often framed as control) demands rebalancing and restructuring of asymmetrical Indigenous/settler relations on the land, in governance, in the academy, and settler society. Indigenous inclusion in PSE does not result in structural, transformational, reconciliatory, or Indigenizing change, but rather, Indigenous Peoples say they are constrained within colonial governance structures and frameworks. Thriving prospects for upholding Indigenous relational autonomy and Indigenous Knowledge sovereignty in Indigenous programming is rooted in Indigenous governance, which inherently centres local Indigenous Peoples, their lands, knowledges, languages, histories, and spiritualities. It also requires settler peoples "to Treaty" their way forward using Treaty epistemologies and ontologies to uphold Treaty values, relationships, and responsibilities, and to create ethical spaces for Indigenous governance. The experiences, stories, and understandings of the Traditional Advisory Council of the Indigenous Studies Ph.D. program, plus 14 Indigenous Knowledge Holders and 20 settler people associated with three programs at the Chanie Wenjack School of Indigenous Studies at Trent University, as well as insights from Mi'kmaw Dr./Elders Murdena and Albert Marshall regarding the former Toqwa'tu'kl Kjijitaqnn/Integrative Science program at Cape Breton University, ground and guide this work. The work utilizes transdisciplinary and qualitative approaches, including co-learning, etuaptmumk (the gift of multiple perspectives), Indigenist, decolonizing and settler-colonial theory, within relational and Treaty-based accountability ethics. It draws from Indigenous-centred literature. It contributes to Indigenous, settler-colonial, reconciliation, and political studies; knowledge engagement, translation and mobilization; systemic change; Treaty education; co-learning; transdisciplinary and transcultural education and research; and Indigenous-settler alliances. The findings are relevant to PSIs across Chi'Mikinak.

Author Keywords: Albert and Murdena Marshall, Co-Learning and Two-Eyed Seeing, Indigenous Education, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Systemic Change in Settler-Colonial Education, Treaty Education in Canada

Predicting vehicle speed at critical road segments, such as pedestrian crossings during left-turn maneuvers at signalized intersections, is essential for improving traffic safety and supporting autonomous driving systems. This thesis presents a novel two-stage hybrid deep learning framework enhanced with reinforcement learning to forecast vehicle left-turn speed at pedestrian crossings.

Using a multivariate time series dataset of vehicle speed and acceleration, the final three seconds of data are intentionally removed to simulate real-world decision-making prior to reaching pedestrian crossings. In stage one, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) imputes the removed values. Stage two uses the imputed data to forecast speed, combining Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCNs) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks as feature extractors, followed by a Random Forest Regressor (RFR) for robust speed predictions.

Reinforcement learning is employed to dynamically adjusts the TCN's dilation rate, improving temporal pattern capture. Experimental results show the proposed framework outperforms standalone, hybrid, and state-of-the-art models.

Author Keywords: Data Imputation, Dynamic Dilation, Left-Turn Maneuver, Reinforcement Learning, Temporal Convolutional Network, Time series Forecasting

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) plays a vital role in lake ecosystems, yet its temporal and spatial variations in lakes remain poorly understood. This study investigates DOM dynamics in boreal lakes during the warm season and the Laurentian Great Lakes ice during winter. Sampling 10 boreal lakes in early and late June 2022, revealed subtle changes in DOM in the epilimnion and hypolimnion related to factors such as water residence time and stratification strength. In ice from the Great Lakes, lower dissolved organic carbon concentrations and a higher proportion of protein-like DOM were found compared to water, which mostly contained terrestrial-like DOM. Ice DOM composition varied with factors such as ice thickness, water nutrients, and DOM concentration in ice and water. In addition, we found that the potential release of protein-like DOM from ice to the water during spring melt is considerable and may fuel heterotrophic microbial metabolism.

On many farms, stone and wooden field borders define field sizes. These are commonly perceived as land lost to production and refuges for pests and disease, causing such fences and hedges to be removed to create larger fields for increased productivity; this process has eliminated trees and shrubs that provide habitat along these fencerows. This research explores the alignment of agricultural productivity and wildlife conservation, proposing that species such as feral apples may serve as direct economic resources for producers and act to protect such remaining fences and hedges. This study focused on farms in the Dummer Moraine, which have small fields, adventive hedges on rock piles and rail fences. Using field size analysis, apple frequencies and apple jelly tasting, the research demonstrates that feral apples could provide economic incentive for keeping these hedges intact, offering a practical mechanism for their conservation, benefiting both biodiversity and farm productivity.

KEYWORDS: biodiversity conservation, farm gate sales, fencerows, feral apples, hedges, linear forests

Author Keywords: biodiversity conservation, farm gate sales, fencerows, feral apples, hedges, linear forests