A multigene phylogeny and timeline for Trichoptera (Insecta)

The Trichoptera, or caddisflies, are traditionally split into two taxonomic subdivisions: the ‘retreat-making’ Annulipalpia and the ‘case-making’ Integripalpia (sensu Ross). The monophyly of these groups is well documented; however, the establishment of a third subdivision, ‘Spicipalpia’, and the positions of the five ‘spicipalpian’ families is much debated. In contrast to previous molecular studies using nuclear ribosomal RNA, a recent trichopteran study (using nuclear protein-coding genes) placed one of these ‘spicipalpian’ families, the free-living predatory Rhyacophilidae, as the sister taxon to the rest of Trichoptera, a result that has significant implications for both the understanding of trichopteran evolution and its timing. This paper sets out to investigate the relationships of Trichoptera using several newly sequenced genes, together with previously published gene sequences. This dataset is the largest trichopteran dataset to date, covering six independent genes and > 10 000 nucleotides, and containing 185 species representing 49 families. With all data included, likelihood and Bayesian analyses support a monophyletic Annulipalpia and a monophyletic Integripalpia, which includes the ‘spicipalpians’ as a paraphyletic grade at the base of this clade. However, an analysis of the protein-coding data alone using similar analytical methods recovers Rhyacophilidae as the most basal taxon in Trichoptera, with low support. A reanalysis correcting for nucleotide composition bias provides support for the placement of the ‘spicipalpian’ taxa as sister to the Integripalpia, consistent with the total data analysis, suggesting that the basal position of Rhyacophilidae in the uncorrected analysis could be (or is probably) an artefact of base composition. We find it likely that ancestral trichopterans made incipient cases and retreats, and these had independent origins as precocious pupal chambers. Molecular dating analysis in beast , using the birth-death model of speciation, with a relaxed-clock model of sequence evolution informed by 37 fossil constraints, suggests that the most recent common ancestor of Trichoptera appeared in the Permian (c. 275 Ma) in line with the first appearance of Trichoptera in the fossil record, and that vicariance explains the distribution of most trichopteran taxa. A new infraordinal name, Phryganides , is introduced for the tube-case-making families of Integripalpia.     

The Precautionary Principle: A European Perspective

The ‘precautionary principle’, as formulated in the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environ ment and Development, calls for regulatory action in the face of serious environmental risks even in the absence of full scientific certainty. This paper traces negotiation of the principle at the Rio Conference, and its history in Europe from 1969 Swedish legislation to the latest directives of the European Union. As illustrated by recent court cases from Germany and France, in particular (on nuclear power plants, electro magnetic fields, and genetically modified organisms), judicial interpretation of the principle has tended to be restrictive. Future law making in this field is likely to focus on public access to environmental risk information, and on the development of new ‘right to know’ instru ments such as mandatory product labelling and transnational pollutant release inven tories, an area where Europe can still learn from North American experience.     

Evidences for an Alternative Genealogy of ‘Sangiovese’

Two different hypothesis for the parentage of ‘Sangiovese’, the most important and widespread Italian winegrape, have been proposed by some previous studies. We screened our grapevine collection, mostly comprising south Italian cultivars collected to preserve biodiversity, to asses kinships. Surprisingly we found two previously unreported candidate parents for ‘Sangiovese’. The first putative parent is ‘Ciliegiolo’ a well know variety already addressed as relative of ‘Sangiovese’; the second putative parent is ‘Negrodolce’, an old local variety we recovered and was considered lost during the last century. In order to obtain a stronger statistical support for this new kinship, we tested seventy different microsatellite markers but only 57 were found reliable. The new proposed parentage stood well even with such a in depth molecular analysis whereas only one discrepancy was found in one of the 57 microsatellite marker analyzed. This discrepancy is certainly due to a null-allele and therefore it should not impair our hypothesis but it points out limits of the microsatellites profiling as a pedigree research method considering that this is the third different kinship proposed so far for ‘Sangiovese’. Thus in this article, by means of detailed molecular fingerprinting, we provide a completely new strong evidence for a south Italian origin of ‘Sangiovese’ and we discuss our findings comparing our data with those previously reported by other authors.     

广东珠海40种景天科多肉植物的适应性评价

于2015年10月起在广东珠海对40 种景天科多肉植物进行为期2年的生长观测,对其观赏性、生态适应性进行评价,以期筛选适合本土生长的优良多肉植物。结果显示,综合评价等级最优(Ⅴ级)植物9种,分别为姬胧月Graptopetalum ‘Bronze’、胧月Graptopetalum paraguayense、铭月Sedum adolphli、秋丽Graptosedum ‘Francesco Baldi’、江户紫Kalanchoe marmorata、窄叶不死鸟Kalanchoe ‘Fortyniner’、燕子掌Crassula portulacea、丸叶姬秋丽Graptopetalum mendozae、姬秋丽Graptopetalum ‘Mirinae’;综合评价等级优(Ⅳ级)植物6种,分别为子持莲华Orostachys furuser、鲁氏石莲Echeveria runyonii、初恋Echeveria huthspinke、冬美人Pachyphytum oviferum ‘Pachytoides’、青星美人Pachyphytum ‘Doctor Comelius’、千佛手Sedum super ‘Burros’。上述种类可在珠海及周边城市推广应用。     

‘Bridges to cash’: channelling agency in mobile money

Encountered by mobile money professionals – industry and philanthropic actors seeking to bring mobile phone‐enabled financial products to poor people in the ‘developing world’ – the authors move together with new collaborators to inquire into a problem they had been grappling with for some time. This is the problem of agency; specifically, the agency of ‘mobile money agents’, the people ‘on the ground’ or ‘in the field’ who form a crucial function in permitting others to put cash into an electronic money transfer system and pull cash out of it. These ‘human ATMs’ or ‘bridges to cash’ become the object of analytical scrutiny for mobile money experts and anthropologists. This article takes that analytical scrutiny – and not mobile money agents themselves – as its object. It seeks to understand how ‘agency’ inflects debates over money, its meaning and its pragmatics, and its transformation in new communicative infrastructures, and how it might inform anthropology and political struggles over money and payment.     

Between new genetic discoveries and large randomized trials—neurological research in the era of systems medicine

The 2012 Eibsee meeting on ‘Cellular Mechanisms of Neurodegeneration’ addressed the need to integrate research on classical neurodegenerative mechanisms with investigations that relate to the immunological, glial and vascular sequels that accompany and often propagate neuronal injury. We report on the central topics that were addressed and discuss future directions towards establishing ‘systems neurology’ as a new integrated research field.     

Inheritance of resistance to lettuce root aphid in the lettuce cultivars 'Avoncrisp' and 'Lakeland"

The inheritance of resistance in two lettuce cultivars to lettuce root aphid, Pemphigus bursarius, was studied in a series of laboratory and field experiments at Wellesbourne between 1989 and 1992. A source of total resistance in the cv. ‘Avoncrisp’ which is linked to the downy mildew resistance gene Dm6, was shown to be governed by a single dominant gene. There were no maternal effects evident in the inheritance of this resistance. The basis of the high level of resistance which exists in the cv. ‘Lakeland’ (formerly known as ‘Jubilee’) was also shown to be controlled by the same dominant gene. The linkage between Dm6 and root aphid resistance was broken in ‘Lakeland’ as this cultivar does not possess the Dm6 gene. The linkage was presumably broken when the original cross between the parents of cv. ‘Lakeland’, ‘Calmar’ and ‘Avoncrisp’ was made. Under laboratory conditions small numbers of aphids commence development on cv. ‘Lakeland’ but colonies fail to develop and under field conditions the resistance provides adequate Protectión against the pest. The resistance in both ‘Avoncrisp’ and ‘Lakeland’ was effective against a population of lettuce root aphid collected from an endive crop in southern France as well as being effective against the Wellesbourne population of this aphid.     

Role of nuclear Lamin A/C in cardiomyocyte functions

Lamin A/C is a structural protein of the nuclear envelope (NE) and cardiac involvement in Lamin A/C mutations was one of the first phenotypes to be reported in humans, suggesting a crucial role of this protein in the cardiomyocytes function. Mutations in LMNA gene cause a class of pathologies generically named ‘Lamanopathies’ mainly involving heart and skeletal muscles. Moreover, the well‐known disease called Hutchinson–Gilford Progeria Syndrome due to extensive mutations in LMNA gene, in addition to the systemic phenotype of premature aging, is characterised by the death of patients at around 13 typically for a heart attack or stroke, suggesting again the heart as the main site sensitive to Lamin A/C disfunction. Indeed, the identification of the roles of the Lamin A/C in cardiomyocytes function is a key area of exploration. One of the primary biological roles recently conferred to Lamin A/C is to affect contractile cells lineage determination and senescence. Then, in differentiated adult cardiomyocytes both the ‘structural’ and ‘gene expression hypothesis’ could explain the role of Lamin A in the function of cardiomyocytes. In fact, recent advances in the field propose that the structural weakness/stiffness of the NE, regulated by Lamin A/C amount in NE, can ‘consequently’ alter gene expression.     

Symbiosis as the way of eukaryotic life: The dependent co-origination of the body

Molecular analyses of symbiotic relationships are challenging our biological definitions of individuality and supplanting them with a new notion of normal part–whole relationships. This new notion is that of a ‘holobiont’, a consortium of organisms that becomes a functionally integrated ‘whole’. This holobiont includes the zoological organism (the ‘animal’) as well as its persistent microbial symbionts. This new individuality is seen on anatomical and physiological levels, where a diversity of symbionts form a new ‘organ system’ within the zoological organism and become integrated into its metabolism and development. Moreover, as in normal development, there are reciprocal interactions between the ‘host’ organism and its symbionts that alter gene expression in both sets of cells. The immune system, instead of being seen as functioning solely to keep microbes out of the body, is also found to develop, in part, in dialogue with symbionts. Moreover, the immune system is actively involved in the colonization of the zoological organism, functioning as a mechanism for integrating microbes into the animal-cell community. Symbionts have also been found to constitute a second mode of genetic inheritance, providing selectable genetic variation for natural selection. We develop, grow and evolve as multi-genomic consortia/teams/ecosystems.     

Pattern Cladistics and the ‘Realism–Antirealism Debate’ in the Philosophy of Biology

Despite the amount of work that has been produced on the subject over the years, the ‘transformation of cladistics’ is still a misunderstood episode in the history of comparative biology. Here, I analyze two outstanding, highly contrasting historiographic accounts on the matter, under the perspective of an influential dichotomy in the philosophy of science: the opposition between Scientific Realism and Empiricism. Placing special emphasis on the notion of ‘causal grounding’ of morphological characters (sensu Olivier Rieppel) in modern developmental biology’s (mechanistic) theories, I arrive at the conclusion that a ‘new transformation of cladistics’ is philosophically plausible. This ‘reformed’ understanding of ‘pattern cladistics’ entails retaining the interpretation of cladograms as ‘schemes of synapomorphies’, but in association to construing cladogram nodes as ‘developmental-genetic taxic homologies’, instead of ‘standard Darwinian ancestors’. The reinterpretation of pattern cladistics presented here additionally proposes to take Bas Van Fraassen’s ‘constructive empiricism’ as a philosophical stance that could properly support such analysis of developmental-genetic data for systematic purposes. The latter suggestion is justified through a reappraisal of previous ideas developed by prominent pattern cladists (mainly, Colin Patterson), which concerned a scientifically efficient ‘observable/non-observable distinction’ linked to the conceptual pair ‘ontogeny and phylogeny’. Finally, I argue that a robust articulation of Antirealist alternatives in systematics may provide a rational basis for its disciplinary separation from evolutionary biology, as well as for a critical reconsideration of the proper role of certain Scientific Realist positions, currently popular in comparative biology.     

On trusting ethnography: serendipity and the reflexive return to the fields of Gujarat

We draw on David Pocock's fieldwork of the 1950s in central Gujarat, India, as a comparative resource to think about social change and anthropological knowledge. Revisiting where Pocock had been through new fieldwork, we were encouraged to think about the ways in which places are accessed and subsequently understood. Against our conscious will, the pathways we were able to take through the field strongly resembled those Pocock took sixty years earlier. The coincidence is such that the material casts shadows of doubt over the potency of terms such as ‘serendipity’ and ‘chance’ to characterize key moments of ethnographic fieldwork. Against the primacy given to the self in much reflexive anthropology, we demonstrate that the personal attributes of the anthropologist might influence the production of ethnographic research less than is generally assumed. The double bind of our ‘reflexive return’ comes from revisiting an anthropological field and experiencing the agency of that field in making what we can know.     

Towards predictive resistance models for agrochemicals by combining chemical and protein similarity via proteochemometric modelling

Resistance to pesticides is an increasing problem in agriculture. Despite practices such as phased use and cycling of ‘orthogonally resistant’ agents, resistance remains a major risk to national and global food security. To combat this problem, there is a need for both new approaches for pesticide design, as well as for novel chemical entities themselves. As summarized in this opinion article, a technique termed ‘proteochemometric modelling’ (PCM), from the field of chemoinformatics, could aid in the quantification and prediction of resistance that acts via point mutations in the target proteins of an agent. The technique combines information from both the chemical and biological domain to generate bioactivity models across large numbers of ligands as well as protein targets. PCM has previously been validated in prospective, experimental work in the medicinal chemistry area, and it draws on the growing amount of bioactivity information available in the public domain. Here, two potential applications of proteochemometric modelling to agrochemical data are described, based on previously published examples from the medicinal chemistry literature.     

Too strict or too loose? Integrative taxonomic assessment of Bombus lapidarius complex (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

The latest progress of the taxonomy is the use of integrative approach for species delimitation based on a multisource dataset. However, the taxonomic decision that should be made when convergence between the different lines of evidence is not observed remains debated. Here, we investigate the consequences of the application of an ‘integration by cumulation’ approach on the taxonomic statuses within the Bombus lapidarius complex when using an integrative taxonomic framework (i.e. nuclear and mitochondrial markers along with reproductive traits) compared with a strict ‘integration by congruence’ method. Our results show similar taxonomic conclusions whatever the decision-making approach used except for one taxon. According to the differentiation observed in our integrative taxonomic framework, recent divergence time and other field observations for this taxon, we assume that a too strict decision-making method could fail to detect recently diverged species. This is exemplified by the new species Bombus bisiculus sp. n. occurring in South Italy and Sicily.     

New racisms,new racial subjects? The neo-liberal moment and the racial landscape of contemporary Britain

Abstract

The articles in this volume reflect upon a very specific moment in the social architecture of British society: a moment that brings financial meltdown together with some sizeable shifts in the racial and ethnic landscape of the UK. As a ‘neo-liberal revolution’ heralds the end of public services and the end of the welfare state, it proclaims ‘the end of race’ as well. But cultural retrenchment and coded xenophobia have also been sweeping the political terrain, accompanied by ‘new racisms’ and ‘new racial subjects’ that only close contextual analysis can unpick. Against those who suggest that we live in a post-racial time, the research presented offers friction. By focusing on particular locations in Britain at a particular moment, the articles explore local stories of ‘race’ and racism across changing sociopolitical ground.     

Equivocal locations: being ‘red’ in ‘Red Bologna’

This article addresses a classic ethnographic problem in the study of Italy: how is it that people can subscribe simultaneously to seemingly contradictory ideologies, such as Catholicism and Communism? It does so by describing examples from Italy's ‘showcase city’ of the left, ‘Red Bologna’, in which to be ‘red’ is ubiquitous but each person's ‘red’ is a different thing: being ‘red’ (differently) is the idiom in which real political distinctions are expressed over issues like religion or immigration. In parallel, I discuss the relationship between the ‘field’ as a location and the ‘field’ as a conceptual topic. My account replicates internal ethnographic differences at the analytical level by highlighting the differences between being left‐wing in Bologna and its meaning as a concept in anthropology. Hence the ‘equivocal location’: a field‐site that is productively different, from what an inexperienced ethnographer expected from it, from conceptual discussions in anthropology, and from itself.     

Omarakana revisited,or ‘do dual organizations exist?’ in the Trobriands

Omarakana is arguably the most renowned village in the Trobriand and anthropological worlds. It is the very centre and wellspring of the North Kiriwinan universe and thus a sacred site, serving as the home of the Tabalu chiefly paramountcy. For us anthropologists, it is ground zero for our field methodology, thanks to Malinowski's pioneering research, and probably Melanesia's most hierarchical polity. Ironically, though, very little is actually known ethnographically about Omarakana's spatial layout. In this article I seek to compensate for that deficiency, arguing that Omarakana's seemingly concentric contours encode transformations of indigenous symbolism involving recurrent metaphors drawn from at least three conjoined semantic contexts of wide distribution across the Austronesian sphere and beyond: the double bisection of ‘male’ versus ‘female’; the botanical imagery of ‘base’, ‘body’, ‘tip’, and ‘fruit’; and various elements of ‘canoe’ symbolism. This alternative view of Omarakana's spatio‐temporal plan sheds new light on various additional dimensions of Trobriand sociality and cosmology while elaborating classic and contemporary anthropological theories of dualism.     

Fertility and birth in an unfamiliar environment: The case of Turkish migrant women in Sweden

The debate on critical history has taken on a new dimension in recent years, challenging the very status of history’ as a privileged, objective discourse. Historians, and practitioners of other disciplines, have used the ‘voice from the edge’, and the ‘fragmentary statement’ to disturb the totalizing and normalizing character of historical writing. Other historians have condemned this disturbing of the ‘centre’, of the inherited form of historical narrative and of well‐established objects of investigation, for its nihilism and its ‘absolute’ relativism. The following article returns to this debate with some reflections based on materials drawn mainly from India.     

A method of Reflexive Balancing in a Pragmatic,Interdisciplinary and Reflexive Bioethics

In recent years there has been a wealth of literature arguing the need for empirical and interdisciplinary approaches to bioethics, based on the premise that an empirically informed ethical analysis is more grounded, contextually sensitive and therefore more relevant to clinical practice than an ‘abstract’ philosophical analysis. Bioethics has (arguably) always been an interdisciplinary field, and the rise of ‘empirical’ (bio)ethics need not be seen as an attempt to give a new name to the longstanding practice of interdisciplinary collaboration, but can perhaps best be understood as a substantive attempt to engage with the nature of that interdisciplinarity and to articulate the relationship between the many different disciplines (some of them empirical) that contribute to the field. It can also be described as an endeavour to explain how different disciplinary approaches can be integrated to effectively answer normative questions in bioethics, and fundamental to that endeavour is the need to think about how a robust methodology can be articulated that successfully marries apparently divergent epistemological and metaethical perspectives with method. This paper proposes ‘Reflexive Bioethics’ (RB) as a methodology for interdisciplinary and empirical bioethics, which utilizes a method of ‘Reflexive Balancing’ (RBL). RBL has been developed in response to criticisms of various forms of reflective equilibrium, and is built upon a pragmatic characterization of Bioethics and a ‘quasi‐moral foundationalism’, which allows RBL to avoid some of the difficulties associated with RE and yet retain the flexible egalitarianism that makes it intuitively appealing to many.