Labor and the Human Relationship with Nature: The Naturalization of Politics in the Work of Thomas Henry Huxley, Herbert George Wells, and William Morris

Historically labor has been central to humaninteractions with the environment, yetenvironmentalists pay it scant attention. Indeed, they have been critical of those whoforeground labor in their politics, socialistsin particular. However, environmentalists havefound the nineteenth-century socialist WilliamMorris appealing despite the fact that he wroteextensively on labor. This paper considers theplace of labor in the relationship betweenhumanity and the natural world in the work ofMorris and two of his contemporaries, theeminent scientist Thomas Henry Huxley, and theFabian socialist Herbert George Wells. Isuggest that Morris's conception of labor hasmuch to recommend it to environmentalists whoare also interested in issues of socialjustice.     

The Origin of Life: A Problem of History,Chemistry, and Evolution

The origin of life is a field full of controversies, not only because of our vague understanding concerning the relevant issues, but also, perhaps more often, owing to our dim conceptual framework throughout the whole field. To improve this situation, an in‐depth conceptual dissection is presented here. It is elucidated that, at its core, the origin of life has three aspects. The facts involved in the process are taken as the historical aspect, which is destined to be uncertain and often irrelevant to debate regarding details. The rules involved include two distinct aspects: chemical mechanisms operated in the whole process, while evolutionary mechanisms joined in only after the emergence of the first Darwinian entities – and then accounted for the subsequent buildup of complexity (this cannot be explained solely by natural selection). Basically, we can ask about the possibility of any assumed event in the origin of life: ‘Is it evolutionarily plausible, chemically feasible, and historically likely?’ Clues from any of the three aspects may be quite valuable in directing our explorations on the other two. This conceptual dissection provides a clearer context for the field, which may even be more useful than any sort of specific research.     

A review of the diversity and evolution of photonic structures in butterflies, incorporating the work of John Huxley (The Natural History Museum, London from 1961 to 1990)

The photonic structures of butterfly wings are among the most anatomically diverse of all those in nature, giving rise to an unrivalled display of structural colours. These have recently become the focus of research by workers in a variety of disciplines, stimulated by their potential applications to technology ('biomimetics'). This interest, together with the discovery of unpublished electron micrographs taken by the late Dr John Huxley (Natural History Museum, London), prompted this review of butterfly photonics in general. The current work provides a synopsis of the literature to date, covering the diversity and evolution of these optical structures and incorporating Huxley's work, which represents an important biomimetic and evolutionary database on its own. This review deals with butterfly photonic devices according to the parts of the butterfly scales on which they occur. In this way, the information is ripe for evolutionary study.     

The acoustic ecology of an Amazonian bird assemblage: the role of allometry,competition and environmental filtering in the acoustic structure

Communication among birds constitutes the foundation of social interactions, and acoustic signals should evolve based on their efficiency to convey information. We examined the acoustic signals of an Amazonian bird assemblage by testing whether vocal allometry was the main driver in song evolution. We expected the acoustic parameters of the songs to follow general allometric rules, as the size of the vocal apparatus limits the vibration capacity of the syrinx. We tested whether smaller species use lower than expected frequencies due to environmental filtering by examining deviations from allometric relationships. Alternatively, small species could use higher than expected frequencies as a consequence of competitive processes that promote the use of vacant portions of the acoustic spectrum. We recorded birdsongs between 2013 and 2018 and measured three spectral parameters: the dominant frequency (FDOM), the minimum fundamental frequency (FFMIN) and the maximum fundamental frequency (FFMAX). We created an allometric model based on the acoustic pattern of the larger species and used it to predict the frequencies of the smaller species. We compared the frequency values expected by allometry with the observed parameters of the avian assemblage. We found that FDOM and FFMIN were higher than expected by allometry alone, supporting competition structuring in the acoustic ecology of the assemblage. The successful insertion of many species into the acoustic space is the result of long processes of natural selection, with our data highlighting the importance of competition in the vocal structuring of the community.