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Facilities
for
students in The Department of Zoology at Miami University
Pearson
Hall and Beyond
Pearson
Hall houses the Department of Zoology as well as the Departments
of Botany and Microbiology. Some resources, most notably
the Electron Microscope Facility and the Animal Care Facility,
are shared by two or more of these departments. The
EM facility includes both transmission and scanning electron
microscopes and full-time personnel for supervision, assistance,
and training. The Animal Care Facility, also staffed
by full-time personnel, provides up-to-date housing and care
for a variety of small mammals. Temperature, humidity,
and photoperiod controlled rooms are also available for housing
insects, aquatic organisms, amphibians, and reptiles.
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| With
the ERC, The Bachelor Wildlife Preserve, and
Hueston Woods State Park, students have ample
opportunities for field work |
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The Bachelor
Wildlife Reserve, located one mile from campus, contains more
than 400 acres of diverse habitats, including streams, flood
plains, farm ponds, forests, a pine plantation, and grasslands.
The Ecology
Research Center (ERC), composed of 183 acres of diverse habitat
types, includes a 1,000-square-foot all-purpose building containing
a biogenetics laboratory, a controlled environmental chamber,
animal room facilities, and basic ecological equipment.
The ERC also includes 16 quarter-acre outdoor small mammal
enclosures, several newly constructed experimental ponds,
experimental vegetation plots, outdoor training and testing
facilities for animal orientation research, replicate aviaries,
micro-enclosures, prairies research plots, a modern precipitation
chemistry and weather station, and a large pole barn for workshops,
storage, and research.
Hueston
Woods, a 3,584-acre state park, is located five miles north
of Oxford. Habitat types include a 300-acre beech-maple
climax forest. The park also contains 630-acre Acton
Lake, on which the department maintains a 24-foot pontoon
boat and a 16-foot fiberglass boat. Electroshockers,
flowmeters, and echo-sounders are available for use in the
lake and other aquatic areas.
Special
Equipment and Facilities
Ecology,
systematics, and environmental toxicology
Two large aquatic animal rooms are available for maintaining
marine and freshwater organisms. Living stream tank
systems simulate natural streams. Equipment in research
laboratories includes environmental chambers for controlling
light intensity, temperature, and photoperiod; flow-through
respirometers; refrigerated water baths; and a Porta-Cool
Porta-Temp System for maintaining animals under various temperature
conditions. Related ecological-limnological equipment
include microbomb calorimeters, Kjeldahl and wet oxidation
apparatus, Aminco photometer and integrator for ATP analyses,
and a Perkin-Elmer elemental analyzer (C, H, O, N, and S).
| Pearson
Hall houses The Department of Zoology as well
as several other of the biological science department |
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Environmental
and ecological toxicology facilities include instrumentation
for the analysis of trace metals and organic contaminants,
dual-beam atomic absorption spectrophotometers, capillary
gas and high-pressure liquid chromatographs, rotary and
nitrogen evaporation equipment, scanning spectroradiometer,
and static and flow-through exposure systems with a serial
diluter, photoperiod, temperature control, and simulated
sunlight.
Behavioral
ecology facilities include a well-equipped laboratory
for specialized hormonal assays and four controlled environment
rooms. A diversity of behavioral testing and recording
equipment is available, including videotape cameras, aquatic
and terrestrial locomotor activity monitoring systems,
event recorders, movie cameras, tape recorders, and a
sonograph.
Teaching
and research in entomology is centered around an insect
collection that contains more than 82,000 specimens representing
29 of the 30 insect orders most commonly recognized.
The largest number of specimens are in the orders Diptera,
Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, and Lepidoptera. Facilities
associated with the insect collection include an environmental
control chamber, insect rearing equipment, qualitative
and quantitative insect sampling devices, stereomicroscopes,
and various environmental measuring devices.
Genetics,
molecular biology, and developmental biology
Animal rooms, incubators, and fresh-
and salt-water aquaria are available for maintaining a
variety of experimental organisms. The research
laboratories are fully equipped for a wide variety of
experimental approaches. Optical equipment and
facilities available for research include dark rooms,
transmission and scanning electron microscopes, ultramicrotomes,
cryomicrotomes, microspectrophotometers, fluorescence
microscopes, and phase contrast microscopes. Both
scintillation and gamma counters are available for research
involving radioisotopes in a specially designed and equipped
radioisotope laboratory.
Biochemical
research equipment and facilities include walk-in cold
rooms, several electrophoretic devices, fraction collectors,
chromataographic equipment of all kinds, ultraviolet visible
spectrophotmeters fitted with chart recorders and specialized
accessories, and homogenizers. Centrifugation equipment
includes microcentrifuges, refrigerated low-speed and
high-speed centrifuges, and ultracentrifuges containing
a variety of rotors accompanied by automatic density gradient
fractionation equipment.
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| The
laboratories available to students offer a variety
of high-end research equipment specialized for
everything from ecology to neuroscience |
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Some
laboratories are specially equipped for tissue culture and
/ or protozoology sterile technique research and are fitted
with CO-2 incubators, transfer and laminar flow hoods, and
inverted phase contrast microscopy equipment. Other
laboratories are specially designed and equipped for recombinant
DNA research and contain biohazard laminar flow hoods, incubators
for propagation of recombinant viral and bacterial organisms,
ultra-cold freezers, low-voltage electrophoretic equipment,
ultraviolet/visible Polaroid camera set-up, and high-voltage
DNA sequencing apparatus.
Physiology
and neuroscience
The physiologists in The Department
of Zoology are equipped for research studies ranging from
the cellular to the whole animal level of organization.
Many items of equipment are available for both teaching
and research, including Tektronix oscilloscopes, grass stimulators
and polygraphs, Macintosh computers with MacLab data-acquisition
systems, respirometers, electric and mechanical balances,
spectrophotometers, pH meters, Osmette and Wescor osmometers,
an Ametek oxygen analyzer, and a Coleman flame photometer.
Fresh- and sea-water aquaria, constant temperature chambers,
and rooms for housing small mammals are also available,
as are scintillation and gamma counters and a separate fully
equipped tissue culture room.
Some
laboratories are fully equipped for intracellular electro-phsyiological
investigations or contain equipment for biochemical studies
(including high-voltage electrophoresis, UV-spectrophotometry,
HPLC, and other chromatography). Others contain equipment
for chronical surgical preparations including stereo-taxic
surgery, radioimmunoassays, electrochemical detection, and
preparation of cells for culture, or contain Warbug equipment,
oxygen electrodes, and other items for metabolic studies.
Other laboratories contain devices for recording and monitoring
cardiovascular and respiratory parameters or contain a variety
of incubator, water baths, oxygen meters, chart recorders
or data loggers, and digital thermometers for monitoring
whole animal phsyiological responses.
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