Stacey Weiss

Stacey Weiss
University of Puget Sound | UPS · Department of Biology

PhD

About

43
Publications
4,899
Reads
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1,001
Citations
Additional affiliations
January 2015 - present
UPS Group
Position
  • Animal Communication
August 2004 - present
UPS Group
Position
  • Professor (Full)
July 2004 - present
University of Puget Sound
Education
August 1992 - May 1999
Duke University
Field of study
  • Zoology
September 1987 - June 1991
University of California, Los Angeles
Field of study
  • Biology - Evolution, Ecology & Behavior

Publications

Publications (43)
Article
Full-text available
Maternal transmission of microbes occurs across the animal kingdom and is vital for offspring development and long-term health. The mechanisms of this transfer are most well studied in humans and other mammals but are less well understood in egg-laying animals, especially those with no parental care. Here we investigate the transfer of maternal mic...
Article
Full-text available
Marine resource subsidies alter consumer dynamics of recipient populations in coastal systems. The response to these subsidies by generalist consumers is often not uniform, creating inter- and intrapopulation diet variation and niche diversification that may be intensified across heterogeneous landscapes. We sampled western fence lizards, Sceloporu...
Preprint
Full-text available
Marine resource subsidies alter consumer dynamics of recipient populations in coastal systems. The response to these subsidies by generalist consumers is often not uniform, creating inter- and intrapopulation diet variation and niche diversification that may be intensified across heterogeneous landscapes. We sampled western fence lizards, Sceloporu...
Article
Full-text available
Animals and their microbiomes exert reciprocal influence; the host’s environment, physiology, and phylogeny can impact the composition of the microbiome, while the microbes present can affect host behavior, health, and fitness. While some microbiomes are highly malleable, specialized microbiomes that provide important functions can be more robust t...
Article
Full-text available
Long-term studies of animal microbiomes under natural conditions are valuable for understanding the effects of host demographics and environmental factors on host-associated microbial communities, and how those effects interact and shift over time. We examined how the cloacal microbiome of wild Sceloporus virgatus (the striped plateau lizard) varie...
Article
Microbial diversity and community function are related, and can be highly specialized in different gut regions. The cloacal microbiome of Sceloporus virgatus females provides antifungal protection to eggshells, a specialized function that suggests a specialized microbiome. Here, we describe the cloacal, intestinal, and oviductal microbiome from S....
Article
Full-text available
Background Beneficial microbes can be vertically transmitted from mother to offspring in many organisms. In oviparous animals, bacterial transfer to eggs may improve egg success by inhibiting fungal attachment and infection from pathogenic microbes in the nest environment. Vertical transfer of these egg-protective bacteria may be facilitated throug...
Preprint
Microbial diversity and community function are related, and can be highly specialized in different gut regions. The cloacal microbiome of Sceloporus virgatus provides antifungal protection to eggshells during oviposition – a specialized function that suggests a specialized microbial composition. Here, we describe the S. virgatus cloacal microbiome...
Article
Full-text available
Controlled low‐intensity fires are commonly used in ecosystem management for both habitat restoration and wildfire management. Animals in those ecosystems may respond to fire by shifting energy allocation away from reproduction and growth, and toward maintenance. Stress‐induced shifts in energy allocation may affect the expression of condition‐depe...
Article
Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) present on the surface of arthropods are important mediators of both intraspecific and interspecific interactions. They are known to be important chemical cues that help predatory arthropods locate prey, yet less is known about if and how vertebrate insectivores use these nearly ubiquitous chemical cues. We examined be...
Preprint
Full-text available
Microbial diversity and community function are related, and both can be highly specialized in different regions of the gut. The cloacal microbiome of Sceloporus virgatus lizards has low diversity, suggesting a specialized function, and is known to transfer antifungal microbes to eggshells during oviposition. We hypothesize that the cloacal microbio...
Article
Behavior courses face numerous challenges when moving to an online environment, as has been made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges occur largely because behavior courses, like most organismal biology courses, often stress experiential learning through laboratories that involve live animals, as well as a lecture component that emp...
Preprint
Full-text available
Face-to-face classes in animal behavior often stress experiential learning through laboratories that involve observation of live animals, as well as a lecture component that emphasizes formative assessment, discussion and critical thinking. As a result, behavior courses face unique challenges when moving to an online environment, as has been made n...
Article
As science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms in higher education transition from lecturing to active learning, the frequency of student interactions in class increases. Previous research documents a gender bias in participation, with women participating less than would be expected on the basis of their numeric proportions....
Article
Full-text available
Many lizards are olfactory foragers and prey upon herbivorous arthropods, yet their responses to common herbivore‐associated plant volatiles remain unknown. As such, their role in mediating plant indirect defenses also remains largely obscured. In this paper, we use a cotton‐swab odor presentation assay to ask whether lizards respond to two arthrop...
Article
Full-text available
Competition for resources is an important mechanism that shapes ecological communities. Interspecific competition can affect habitat selection, fitness, and abundance in animals. We used a removal experiment and mark–recapture to test the hypothesis that competition with the larger and more abundant Striped Plateau Lizard (Sceloporus virgatus H.M....
Article
Full-text available
Performance gaps in science are well documented, and an examination of underlying mechanisms that lead to underperformance and attrition of women and underrepresented minorities (URM) may offer highly targeted means to promote such students. Determining factors that influence academic performance may provide a basis for improved pedagogy and policy...
Article
Full-text available
High male mating effort and high variation in female quality select for male mate choice, which may be expressed as differential investment of reproductive effort based on female value. Male reproductive effort includes investment in direct contest competition with rival males for access to females, yet variation in male-male contest behavior is ra...
Article
Full-text available
Sex pheromones can perform a variety of functions ranging from revealing the location of suitable mates to being honest signals of mate quality, and they are used in the mate selection process by many species of reptile. In this study, we determined whether the skin lipids of female striped plateau lizards (Sceloporus virgatus) can predict the repr...
Article
Full-text available
Individuals with greater expression of secondary sexual traits are often older and have higher survivorship than individuals with lower expression; if so, assessment of such indicator traits may provide genetic and/or direct benefits to potential mates. I examined the relationship between ornament expression, age, and survival in the striped platea...
Article
Full-text available
Signal honesty is theorized to be maintained by condition-dependent trait expression. However, the mechanisms mediating the condition-dependence of sexually selected traits are often unknown. New work suggests that elevated glucocorticoid levels during physiological stress may play a role in maintaining signal honesty. Here, we experimentally exami...
Conference Paper
Background/Question/Methods In many species, females may influence male reproductive decisions by expressing condition-dependent ornaments that honestly signal phenotypic quality. For instance, female striped plateau lizards (Sceloporus virgatus) seasonally express orange throat patches that provide information about female body condition, mite l...
Article
Chemical signals may communicate information about discrete character states, such as species and sex, as well as continuously varying characteristics that affect mate assessment. Here, we investigate whether body size is assessed from chemical cues of Striped Plateau Lizards (Sceloporus virgatus). Preliminary evidence indicated that males may resp...
Article
Indicator models of sexual selection suggest that signal honesty is maintained via costs of ornament expression. Carotenoid-based visual signals are a well-studied example, as carotenoids may be environmentally limited and impact signaler health. However, not all bright yellow, orange and red ornaments found in vertebrates are carotenoid-based; pte...
Article
1. Maternal investment in egg quality can have important consequences for offspring fitness. For example, yolk antioxidants can affect embryonic development as well as juvenile and adult phenotype. Thus, females may be selected to advertise their yolk antioxidant deposition to discriminatory males via ornamental signals, perhaps depending on the re...
Article
The structure and diversity of microbial communities in wild vertebrate populations remain poorly understood, but are expected to have important consequences for individual survival and reproductive success. For instance, recent work has demonstrated that cloacal microbe assemblages of wild birds are related to the phenotypic quality of the host. T...
Article
Full-text available
When females vary in reproductive quality, they may be selected to honestly signal that quality and males may be selected to express mate choice based on this variation. In the striped plateau lizard, females with larger and more saturated orange throat patches are of higher phenotypic quality, and males preferentially associate with brighter femal...
Article
Full-text available
The neuropeptide arginine vasotocin (AVT) and its mammalian homologue arginine vasopressin (AVP) are neuromodulators known to be steroid sensitive and associated with social behaviors in a number of vertebrate taxa. However, the role of AVT/P in the regulation of aggression remains unclear and contrasting effects of this peptide on aggression are s...
Article
Testosterone (T) induces singing behavior and mediates changes in the sizes and neuroanatomical characteristics of brain regions controlling singing behavior (song control regions, SCRs) in songbirds. These effects may require the enzymatic conversion of T into androgenic and estrogenic metabolites by brain tissues and can be modulated by factors s...
Article
Steroid hormones effect changes in both neuroanatomy and aggressive behavior in animals of various taxa. However, whether changes in neuroanatomy directly underlie changes in aggression is unknown. We investigate this relationship among steroid hormones, neuroanatomy, and aggression in a free-living vertebrate with a relatively simple nervous syste...
Article
The regulation of hatching in oviparous animals is important for successful reproduction and survival, but is poorly understood. We unexpectedly found that RU-486, a progesterone and glucocorticoid antagonist, interferes with hatching of viable tree lizard (Urosaurus ornatus) embryos in a dose-dependent manner and hypothesized that embryonic glucoc...
Article
Full-text available
Recent theoretical and empirical studies confirm that male mate choice and/or female-female mate competition can be expressed in the absence of sex-role reversal. Such reproductive patterns may select for the evolution of female traits that indicate female phenotypic or genotypic quality among non-role-reversed species. Although attention to the ev...
Article
The neural mechanisms by which steroid hormones regulate aggression are unclear. Although testosterone and its metabolites are involved in both the regulation of aggression and the maintenance of neural morphology, it is unknown whether these changes are functionally related. We addressed the hypothesis that parallel changes in steroid levels and b...
Article
Testosterone is usually thought to be the major sex steroid regulating adult male territorial aggression in vertebrates. However, recent evidence has suggested a role for progesterone, as well as testosterone, in the organization of the two male reproductive phenotypes of tree lizards (Urosaurus ornatus), which differ in adult levels of territorial...
Article
Long-term captivity can result in abnormal behavior and physiology in many vertebrates. Here, we examine whether semi-natural, outdoor captive environments can offer a compromise, allowing much of the experimental control afforded by captivity, while providing the environmental conditions essential for normal behavior and physiology. We first deter...
Article
Full-text available
Relative to the volume of studies concerning the function and evolution of male-biased sexually dimorphic traits, instances of female-biased sexual dimorphisms remain largely unstudied, especially in species with conventional sex roles. I investigated the signal function of a female-specific ornamental trait using the striped plateau lizard (Scelop...
Article
I tested the effect of reproduction on food intake of the striped plateau lizard, Sceloporus virgatus, a sit-and-wait foraging lizard with a high relative clutch mass (RCM). I maintained male-female pairs in outdoor enclosures throughout the production of females' single annual clutches, observed feeding behavior during methodical feeding trials pe...
Article
Full-text available
Small intestinal brush-border hydrolases usually are assayed in intestinal mucosal homogenates resuspended in solutions of unphysiological ionic composition. Thus, extrapolation of measured Vmax values (maximal reaction rates at high substrate concentrations) to in vivo conditions, hence comparison with physiological substrate loads, is uncertain....
Article
Full-text available
Safety factors of enzymes and transporters are defined as the ratio of Vmax (maximal reaction rates at high substrate concentrations) to the reaction rate under actual physiological conditions. Although corresponding safety factors have been measured for macroscopic biological structures and for human-engineered structures, safety factors have been...

Questions

Question (1)
Question
I will be collecting and transporting microbial swab samples in a region of the world without reliable access to dry ice. Samples will be used for Illumina sequencing. Usually, I transport frozen samples from my field site to my university on dry ice. However, I will not have access to dry ice on my upcoming trip and samples will need to be out of the freezer for up to 10 hours during periods of transport from one field site to another.
Does anyone have any clever tricks to keep small volume (~1ml) samples frozen during transit? For example, might freezing the eppendorf tubes inside a block of ice in a styrofoam cooler work? I've tried using a cheap portable freezer but it didn't reliably keep temperature and the samples thawed and refroze, which is really problematic. Thanks for any suggestions!

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