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.     

‘Deep engagement’ and disengaged reason

In this paper, I explore what it would mean to pursue modes of ‘deeper engagement’ and how this might be done without abandoning the capacity for disengaged reasoning. Charles Taylor recognises disengaged reasoning as ‘one of the most important developments of the modern era’ and as essential to the pursuit of the good society, even though (like everything else) when taken to an extreme it corrupts or distorts the modes of being‐in‐the‐world. In A Secular Age, Taylor continues a long‐running critique of disengaged reason and its contributions to the malaise of modernity, focusing especially on its conflictual relationship with religious belief and its central role in the disenchantment of the world. My objective here is to relativise and contextualise the relationship between disengaged and engaged modes of being, in part by exploring some of the ways in which we may be deeply engaged in the world and with one another while also employing the critical faculties that enable us to analyse dispassionately, amongst other things, theistic and other interpretations of being‐in‐the‐world.     

Cleaner Wrasses Keep Track of the ‘When’ and ‘What’ in a Foraging Task1

In recent years evidence has accumulated that at least some animals can remember the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ of personal experiences. Currently, evidence for such ability is taxonomically restricted to birds and mammals. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that cleaner wrasses Labroides dimidiatus are able to remember when they interacted with what after a single event. In nature, cleaners remove ectoparasites from other reef fishes, so‐called clients. Clients are depleted, non‐stationary food patches at the end of an interaction and replenished only after a delay. In our experiments, we presented twelve cleaners every 2.5 min, a choice between two of a total of four plates with different colours and patterns. One plate was always accessible but contained a non‐preferred food item while the other three contained a preferred food item, but allowed a next feeding event only after 5, 10 or 15 min. Thus, to maximise food intake, cleaners had to remember for each choice when they had last interacted with which plate. When confronted with two plates offering preferred food, cleaners showed an overall significant preference for the plate that allowed access during the trial. For six cleaners, the preference was significant. Also, on trials involving the always accessible plate, cleaners discriminated between trials in which they had to eat the non‐preferred food and trials on which they could eat the preferred food. In conclusion, cleaners are able to track the ‘when’ and ‘what’ (or possibly ‘who’) within a biologically meaningful time period.     

‘Black’ and ‘white’ death: burials in a time of Ebola in Freetown,Sierra Leone

The article examines experiences of the 2014‐15 Ebola crisis in Freetown, Sierra Leone, through an analysis of the performance of burials. While most of the city's residents had no contact with the virus, ‘Ebola’ was inescapable, owing to the onerous state of emergency regulations imposed by national and international authorities. All burials, regardless of the cause of death, were to be performed by newly established official teams operating according to unfamiliar biomedical and bureaucratic protocols. Burials became emblematic of the crisis through presenting a conflict between local practices and novel procedures, which was coded locally in a complex racial language of ‘black’ and ‘white’, recalling a long regional history of violent integration into the Atlantic World. Building on long‐standing anthropological discussion on the relationship between ‘good’ death and social order, the article explores how burials became sites around which opposing ‘orders’ were experienced, negotiated, and reconciled in locally meaningful ways.     

‘I am helping them’: ‘Traffickers’, ‘anti‐traffickers’ and economies of bad faith

For several years, aid programs in the Mekong region have taken an increasing interest in cross‐border mobility and human trafficking and its relationship with development. More recently, there has been an increasing interest in the identification of trafficked victims and the investigation, arrest and prosecution of traffickers. Whereas anti‐trafficking programs ubiquitously define themselves as being in a battle with traffickers, this article argues that although they are not homologous social actors, both engage in acts of bad faith. The article elaborates this argument by drawing attention to the recruitment process within the Lao sex industry as well as to the way in which aid programs attempt to identify trafficked victims. It concludes that imaginary aspects of development underpin a simultaneous disjuncture yet enable the social reproduction of the life worlds of ‘traffickers’ and ‘anti‐traffickers’ alike.     

Detection and Identification of ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma prunorum’, ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma mali’ and ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma pyri’ in Stone Fruit Trees in Poland

A survey was made to determine the incidence of phytoplasmas in 39 sweet and sour cherry, peach, nectarine, apricot and plum commercial and experimental orchards in seven growing regions of Poland. Nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using the phytoplasma‐universal primer pairs P1/P7 followed by R16F2n/R16R2 showed the presence of phytoplasmas in 29 of 435 tested stone fruit trees. The random fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) patterns obtained after digestion of the nested PCR products separately with RsaI, AluI and SspI endonucleases indicated that selected Prunus spp. trees were infected by phytoplasmas belonging to three different subgroups of the apple proliferation group (16SrX‐A, ‐B, ‐C). Nucleotide sequence analysis of 16S rDNA fragment amplified with primers R16F2n/R16R2 confirmed the PCR/Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) results and revealed that phytoplasma infecting sweet cherry cv. Regina (Reg), sour cherry cv. Sokowka (Sok), apricots cv. Early Orange (EO) and AI/5, Japanese plum cv. Ozark Premier (OzPr) and peach cv. Redhaven (RedH) was closely related to isolate European stone fruit yellows‐G1 of the ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma prunorum’ (16SrX‐B). Sequence and phylogenetic analyses resulted in the highest similarity of the 16S rDNA fragment of phytoplasma from nectarine cv. Super Queen (SQ) with the parallel sequence of the strain AP15 of the ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma mali’ (16SrX‐A). The phytoplasma infecting sweet cherry cv. Kordia (Kord) was most similar to the PD1 strain of the ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma pyri’ (16SrX‐C). This is the first report of the occurrence of ‘Ca. P. prunorum’, ‘Ca. P. mali’ and ‘Ca. P. pyri’ in naturally infected stone fruit trees in Poland.     

Nations and Tribes ‘Within’: Emerging Aboriginal ‘Nationalisms’ in Katherine

Throughout Australia, many Aboriginal responses to the legislative and administrative pressures of the native title regime have been couched in a nation‐building idiom expressed through legally incorporated Aboriginal associations. The membership criteria of these umbrella associations are often derived from definitions of the ‘tribe’ or ‘language group’. Yet, in a kind of Balkanisation, those who see themselves as marginalised to positions of uncertainty on the peripheries of the nation often seek to establish their own independent corporations on the basis of exclusive ties to specific areas of land within it, in search of greater recognition and in competition for scarce resources. In Katherine, in the Northern Territory of Australia, the administrative and legislative gaze of the State, particularly the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976, brought into focus a Jawoyn ‘tribe’, soon to express itself in the idiom of nationhood, closely followed by a Wardaman ‘tribe’ and ‘nation’. More recently, a native title gaze has now brought into focus ‘new’ configurations of kindred clusters, apparently located on the ‘peripheries' of the Jawoyn and Wardaman nations, and named and valued them as Dagoman. This paper discusses the processes associated with an emerging, but seemingly already fragmenting, Dagoman nation. It argues that divergent and changing Aboriginal subjectivities disrupt what might be seen as mimetic processes as Aboriginal people employ strategies of transforming essentialist representations of their collective selves in changing conditions of possibility.     

Cycles of coral reef ‘turn‐on’, rapid growth and ‘turn‐off’ over the past 8500 years: a context for understanding modern ecological states and trajectories

Human activities threaten reef ecosystems globally, forcing ecological change at rates and scales regarded as unprecedented in the Holocene. These changes are so profound that a cessation of reef accretion (reef ‘turn‐off’) and net erosion of reef structures is argued by many as the ultimate and imminent trajectory. Here, we use a regional scale reef growth dataset, based on 76 core records (constrained by 211 radiometric dates) from 22 reefs along and across the inner‐shelf of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, to examine the timing of different phases of reef initiation (‘turn‐on’), growth and ‘turn‐off’ during the Holocene. This dataset delineates two temporally discrete episodes of reef‐building over the last 8500 years: the first associated with the Holocene transgression‐early highstand period [～8.5–5.5 k calibrated years bp (cal ybp )]; the second since ～2.3 k cal ybp . During both periods, reefs accreted rapidly to sea level before entering late evolutionary states – states naturally characterized by reduced coral cover and low accretion potential – and a clear hiatus occurs between these reef‐building episodes for which no records of reef initiation exist. These transitions mimic those projected under current environmental disturbance regimes, but have been driven entirely by natural forcing factors. Our results demonstrate that, even through the late Holocene, reef health and growth has fluctuated through cycles independent of anthropogenic forcing. Consequently, degraded reef states cannot de facto be considered to automatically reflect increased anthropogenic stress. Indeed, in many cases degraded or nonaccreting reef communities may reflect past reef growth histories (as dictated by reef growth–sea level interactions) as much as contemporary environmental change. Recognizing when changes in reef condition reflect these natural ‘turn‐on’– growth –‘turn‐off’ cycles and how they interact with on‐going human disturbance is critical for effective coral reef management and for understanding future reef ecological trajectories.     

DEVELOPMENT OF A ‘BIPOLAR’ R‐INDEX1

A new ‘bipolar’ R‐index analysis was proposed and evaluated. Eighteen judges evaluated red color in eight wine samples by comparing each sample with the control. Judges indicated whether the sample had ‘more’, the 'same’, or ‘less’ red color than the control, and whether they were sure or unsure of their decision. Three computational methods were used to examine the results: the ‘traditional’ R‐index, the ‘bipolar’ R‐index (R_more or R_less) and the ‘weighted‐bipolar’ R‐index. While all three methods provided consistent results, the ‘bipolar’ R‐indices reflected bidirectional differences among the samples thus providing more information. A refinement to the computation (‘weighted‐bipolar’ R‐index) was an approach for eliminating the bias associated with overestimation of the sample size and accordingly changed some of the significance levels. Further research is currently underway to expand the scope and application of this method.     

Why coelacanths are not ‘living fossils’

A series of recent studies on extant coelacanths has emphasised the slow rate of molecular and morphological evolution in these species. These studies were based on the assumption that a coelacanth is a ‘living fossil’ that has shown little morphological change since the Devonian, and they proposed a causal link between low molecular evolutionary rate and morphological stasis. Here, we have examined the available molecular and morphological data and show that: (i) low intra‐specific molecular diversity does not imply low mutation rate, (ii) studies not showing low substitution rates in coelacanth are often neglected, (iii) the morphological stability of coelacanths is not supported by paleontological evidence. We recall that intra‐species levels of molecular diversity, inter‐species genome divergence rates and morphological divergence rates are under different constraints and they are not necessarily correlated. Finally, we emphasise that concepts such as ‘living fossil’, ‘basal lineage’, or ‘primitive extant species’ do not make sense from a tree‐thinking perspective. Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays Tree thinking for all biology: the problem with reading phylogenies as ladders of progress Abstract     

Listening to the Call of Dance: Re‐thinking Authenticity and ‘Essentialism’

A sustained and devastating critique has been aimed in recent years at a metaphysics of truth which understands truth and authenticity as essence, as fixed, self‐identical and persistent over time. So successful has this critique been that it is now possible to speak of authenticity only in terms of a certain ‘strategic’ or politically necessary engagement, on the part of subaltern groups, with an essentialist metaphysics. While the critique is a necessary one, taken on its own it has resulted in a reductionist presumption that we are only ever going to encounter versions of truth that we have already understood, for purposes of critique, as so many versions of ‘essentialism’. By contrast, in the ceremonial performances of dance described in this issue of TAJA, across a broad spectrum of cultures, we witness the striking persistence and centrality of references to virtuosity, appropriate ‘feeling’ and to the experience of a kind of integrity, coherence and ‘truth’ in a good performance. The commentary argues that these distinctions rest on traditions that move us quite far from an essentialism both of the spirit and of the body, requiring instead a fresh effort of understanding on our part. Utilising other traditions to develop a better, less reified understanding of truth criteria can help arrest a certain hyper‐expansion of ‘the political’ that threatens to leave no other terms alive with which to inform its own vision of the relation between past, present and future.     

Phylogenetic relationships of the paraphyletic ‘caprimulgiform’ birds (nightjars and allies)

In the past years, paraphyly of the traditional ‘Caprimulgiformes’ (nightjars and allies) with respect to Apodiformes (swifts and hummingbirds) has been well established, but the relationships between the five ‘caprimulgiform’ family‐level taxa remain controversial. These crepuscular or nocturnal birds differ in numerous anatomical features, and here an analysis of 69 morphological characters is performed. Except for the position of the Nyctibiidae (potoos), the topology of the single most‐parsimonious tree agrees with the results of a recently published large‐scale ‘phylogenomic’ study. Whereas molecular data support a clade including Nyctibiidae and the Steatornithidae (oilbird), potoos were shown to be the sister taxon of Caprimulgidae (nightjars) in the present analysis. A sister group relationship between Nyctibiidae and Caprimulgidae is strongly supported, both in terms of bootstrap robustness and the number of synapomorphies, and it is detailed that the morphological data are more likely to reflect the true relationships of these birds. A classification is proposed, and the term Strisores is introduced for a clade including all ‘Caprimulgiformes’ and Apodiformes. It is most parsimonious to assume a single origin of dark activity in the stem lineage of Strisores and a reversal to diurnal activity in Apodiformes. However, a fourfold origin of dark‐activity in the stem lineages of Steatornithidae, Podargidae, Aegothelidae and the Caprimulgidae/Nyctibiidae cannot be conclusively excluded with the data at hand.     

‘Cats give funerals to rats’: making the dead modern with lament

This article compares funeral laments in a Tibeto‐Burman‐speaking community in Yunnan, China, from two periods: the early 1990s, after ritual revitalization was thoroughly underway, and 2011, after this community had come into more intimate contact with the modernity‐obsessed cultures of urban and semi‐urban China. Laments fashion grief in a public setting by conceptualizing the dead and their relations with the living in vivid poetic language. Laments from the early 1990s described these relations as a circuit of suffering, in which children returned a debt of suffering they owed their parents after the latter's deaths. By 2011, innovative lamenters had reorientated their understanding of suffering to be personal, internal, and intimate. The dead became more ‘modern’, allowing the living, defined largely by their relations with the dead, to participate in ‘modernized’ forms of authentic, sincere emotional expression.     

The ‘sparkle’ in fake eyes – the protective effect of mimic eyespots in lepidoptera

Many species of lepidoptera bear conspicuous circular patterns on their wings, known as eyespots, that are hypothesised to protect their bearers against predatory birds. In this study, we focus on a small but ubiquitous feature occurring naturally in lepidopteran eyespots, namely the so‐called ‘sparkle’. The ‘pupil’ in an eyespot is often highlighted by a ‘sparkle’, which is hypothesised to mimic a natural corneal total light reflection evident as a highlight, twinkle, or sparkle in the vertebrate eye. In a study exploring the presence of such sparkles, we found that 53% of lepidopteran eyespots exceeding 1 mm in diameter have a central, pinpoint‐like ‘sparkle’, 12% have a marginal, crescent‐shaped ‘sparkle’, 13% have a semi‐circular ‘sparkle’, and 22% have an intermediate semi‐circular to crescent‐shaped ‘sparkle’. In the lepidopterans’ natural resting position, the marginal ‘sparkles’ are positioned in the upper part of the eyespots’‘pupil’ and thus may create the illusion of a spherical eyeball. The ‘sparkles’ in lepidopteran eyespots do not only appear white to humans, but also reflect ultraviolet light. White and UV‐reflecting ‘sparkles’ also appear ‘white’ for UV‐sensitive viewers such as birds, and thus may effectively mimic the natural highlight in vertebrate eyes as an area of total light reflection. In field experiments using lepidopteran dummies baited with a mealworm, we show that the ‘sparkle’ is one of several components of eyespots eliciting a deterrent effect and that eyespots with a ‘sparkle’ in a natural position have a stronger deterrent effect than those with a ‘sparkle’ in an unnatural position. These findings support the eye mimicry hypothesis that better vertebrate eye mimicry improves the deterrent effect of eyespots.     

Spectral effects of LEDs on chlorophyll fluorescence and pigmentation in Phalaenopsis ‘Vivien’ and ‘Purple Star’

We examined the effect of light emitting diode (LED) lighting in greenhouse facilities on growth, chlorophyll fluorescence and pigmentation in Phalaenopsis ‘Vivien’ and ‘Purple Star’ under purpose‐built LED arrays yielding c. 200 µmol m^?2 s^?1 at plant height for 14 h per day and 24/18°C day/night temperature, respectively, from January to April 2013. The light treatments were (1) 40% blue in 60% red (40% B/R), (2) 0% blue in 100% red (0% B/R) and (3) white LEDs with 32% blue in white (32% B/W, control), with background daylight under shade screens. The plants were harvested twice for leaf growth and pigmentation. There was no clear pattern in the spectral effect on growth since the order of leaf size differed between harvests in March and April. F_v/F_m was in the range of 0.52–0.72, but overall slightly higher in the control, which indicated a permanent downregulation of PSII in the colored treatments. The fluorescence quenching showed no acclimation to color in ‘Purple Star’, while ‘Vivien’ had lower ETR and higher NPQ in the 40% B/R, resembling low light acclimation. The pigmentation showed corresponding spectral response with increasing concentration of lutein while increasing the fraction of blue light, which increased the light absorption in the green/yellow part of the spectrum. The permanent downregulation of PSII moved a substantial part of the thermal dissipation from the light regulated NPQ to non‐regulated energy losses estimated by Φ_NPQ and Φ_NO and the difference found in the balance between Φ_PSII and Φ_NPQ in ‘Vivien’ disappeared when Φ_NO was included in the thermal dissipation.     

‘Shit Happens’: The Selling of Risk in Extreme Sport

This article details the particular commodification of those high‐risk, highadrenalin activities known collectively as ‘extreme sports’. A variety of commercial operators now offer relative sporting neophytes the chance to take part in mountaineering, snow boarding or canyonning adventures that are billed as being ‘high thrill, low risk’. It is the way in which the risk and danger involved in these activities is discursively managed that is of particular interest for this article. The argument developed is that in selling extremity through a range of primarily tourist‐oriented commercial avenues, the very real prospect of death and injury has been stripped from the activity itself. To elaborate this position, this article draws on several sporting disasters, including the much publicised, ill‐fated ascent of Mount Everest in 1996, and the Interlaken canyonning disaster of 1999, as well as the burgeoning literary and media genre—the made‐for‐Hollywood ‘adventure saga’.     

The AAT1 locus is critical for the biosynthesis of esters contributing to ‘ripe apple’ flavour in ‘Royal Gala’ and ‘Granny Smith’ apples

The ‘fruity’ attributes of ripe apples (Malus × domestica) arise from our perception of a combination of volatile ester compounds. Phenotypic variability in ester production was investigated using a segregating population from a ‘Royal Gala’ (RG; high ester production) × ‘Granny Smith’ (GS; low ester production) cross, as well as in transgenic RG plants in which expression of the alcohol acyl transferase 1 (AAT1) gene was reduced. In the RG × GS population, 46 quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for the production of esters and alcohols were identified on 15 linkage groups (LGs). The major QTL for 35 individual compounds was positioned on LG2 and co‐located with AAT1. Multiple AAT1 gene variants were identified in RG and GS, but only two (AAT1‐RGa and AAT1‐GSa) were functional. AAT1‐RGa and AAT1‐GSa were both highly expressed in the cortex and skin of ripe fruit, but AAT1 protein was observed mainly in the skin. Transgenic RG specifically reduced in AAT1 expression showed reduced levels of most key esters in ripe fruit. Differences in the ripe fruit aroma could be perceived by sensory analysis. The transgenic lines also showed altered ratios of biosynthetic precursor alcohols and aldehydes, and expression of a number of ester biosynthetic genes increased, presumably in response to the increased substrate pool. These results indicate that the AAT1 locus is critical for the biosynthesis of esters contributing to a ‘ripe apple’ flavour.