Costs of rearing and sex‐ratio variation in southern grey shrike Lanius meridionalis broods

Several non‐mutually exclusive hypotheses predict adaptive variation in the offspring sex ratio. When conditions for breeding are adverse, parents are predicted to produce more offspring of the less costly sex to rear (‘the cost‐of‐reproduction hypothesis’). Moreover, they also should produce the more dispersing sex in order to diminish future competition (‘the local‐resource‐competition hypothesis’). Here, we analyse brood sex ratio according to rearing conditions in the southern shrike Lanius meridionalis, a species with moderately reversed sexual dimorphism. Our results suggest that females are more costly to rear than males in this species. Adult females proved heavier than males, and female nestling tended to be heavier than male nestlings. Moreover, the greater brood reduction, the more male‐biased was the brood, suggesting that brood reduction implied higher mortality in female nestlings. Consistent with these findings, the brood sex ratio was biased to the less costly sex (males) when breeding conditions were adverse (bad years or low‐quality male parents), supporting the cost‐of‐reproduction hypothesis. By contrast, these findings did not support the local‐resource‐competition hypothesis, which predicted female‐biased brood sex ratio under adverse conditions. As a whole, our results support the idea that birds adaptively modulate sex ratio in order to minimize reproduction costs.     

‘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.     

The Photograph and the Malanggan: Rethinking images on Malakula,Vanuatu

From the recent efflorescence of anthropological engagements with photography we are by now aware that photography is an embodied practice and that photographs are complex materialisations of the subjective and experiential as well as the objective and evidential. Despite discussions of ‘visual repatriation’ (e.g. Brown and Peers 2006 ), and of local responses to colonial photography and other kinds of archival images in the Pacific, little has been discussed regarding the status of photographs as particularly ‘Pacific’ artefacts—objects that make sense in indigenous terms as well as being understood in terms of the connections to other places that their production and circulation might signify. Following Wright’s exhortation to recognise ‘the provincial nature of Eurocentric notions of photography and … suggesting that a certain corporeality and materiality constitute elements of its identity’ (2004: 74) , I discuss the resonance of historical photographs in Vanuatu, building an analogy with Malanggan—funerary carvings from Northern New Ireland. I do not mean to suggest that photographs are complex ritual artefacts, but rather follow the ways in which Malanggan have been used as anthropological conceits, in order to discuss the representational efficacy and materiality of Melanesian images in facilitating the crystallisation of memory and history ( Küchler 1988 ), the enchantment of technology ( Gell 1998, 1999 ), and the consolidation of certain kinds of property relations ( Strathern 2005b ). As my title suggests, I draw on Strathern’s combination of Malanggan and Patents to rethink the potential utility of Malanggan as a ‘way to think’ about the meanings of photographs in Pacific communities.     

The politics of Eros: ritual dialogue and egalitarianism in three Central African hunter‐gatherer societies

It has become standard practice within feminist anthropology to repudiate any essential relationship between the biological body and cultural identity. In recent years, the ongoing deconstruction of the body has come to seem the only ‘natural’ fact. By contrast, this article seeks to reconnect sex, power, and culture in a positive sense, by identifying a political system in which power is kept in motion through the body. Literally dancing it out, organized Mbuti or Yaka gender groups perform a recurrent ritual repartee where power is continually churned up and funnelled back and forth between coalitions. The graphic somatic language that emerges through these dances suggests an alternative power‐principle: kinetic, erotic, and fundamentally non‐coercive. Here, the drawing back of the collective eye to the anatomical nature of power, with the simultaneous ritual de‐privatization of ‘biology’, explodes the body out into a collective political force. The cultural visibility of the female procreative body in such contexts is striking. Using the core theme of dialogism, I rethink the creative potential of sexual duality, and work towards a new understanding of gender, power, and the body.     

Bazar,Big Kites and Other Boys' Things: Distinctions of Gender and Tradition in Balinese Youth Culture

Balinese society is undergoing rapid change, but remains discursively situated in a ‘timeless’ ethos of cultural tradition. This tension can be observed in relation to the cultural activities of the island's young people, particularly the young men. The staging of bazar (neighbourhood fundraising parties), the making of ogoh‐ogoh (giant papier‐mâché effigies to mark Nyepi, the Balinese New Year) and the competitive flying of oversize kites are–despite their sometimes contentious reception from older generations—popularly dubbed as ‘traditional’ expressions of Balinese youth culture. This recourse to tradition must be viewed in relation to two pervasive discourses: that of adat (customary law) and ajeg (a new protectionist ethos in the discourse on Balinese cultural identity). This paper argues that in contemporary urban Bali, male youth culture finds its most visible expressions in relation to the abiding standards of established public ritual and the equally abiding gender divisions that serve to guarantee the reproduction of ‘traditional’ social life. Rather than fighting aggressively against the grown‐up norm, these expressions replicate the public culture of the adult world—while drawing on global and national youth styles—and strive towards the expression of a specifically ‘Balinese’ youth culture.     

Basotho blankets: ownership and appropriation

This article examines claims of ownership and appropriation of Basotho blankets. Ingrained in the ritual and mundane reproduction of life among the Basotho people of Lesotho, the luminous blankets and their story have enticed many to deal in them. The blankets are manufactured and trademarked by Aranda Textile Mills, and in recent years they have been adapted by Basotho fashion designers, foreign private entrepreneurs, and the Louis Vuitton fashion house and depicted in Marvel's Black Panther film. The diversity of the actors involved has created a complex field of entitlement claims. The article develops a theoretical framework for understanding the processes through which actors claim, appropriate, and transform the value of ‘heritage’ items. This is done by viewing the actors’ efforts as ‘scale-making projects’ across ‘regimes of value’ that aim to expand their ‘spatiotemporal control’ and by viewing the actors themselves as ‘brands’ posing as originators of value.     

Words of the ancestors: disembodied knowledge and secrecy in East Timor

By examining processes of revealing and concealing ancestral ‘words’, this article analyses the connection between East Timorese knowledge practices and status competition. The point of departure is a tension between the assertion by eminent ritual speakers in the Idaté‐speaking village of Funar of the need to discover the most truthful ‘trunk’ knowledge, and the simultaneous and continual concealment of what this ‘trunk’ may consist of. The article explores the discursive practices that sustain the notion that knowledge exists as an immutable essence outside of history, and the difficulty of maintaining this notion given dramatic historical events in East Timor in recent decades. Whereas secrecy and concealment are key strategies of dealing with unrelenting contestations over the ownership and content of ‘trunk’ words, a ritual speaker's attempt to deny the interrelational aspect of knowledge is undermined by the need for others to recognize him as its rightful guardian.     

To see that which cannot be seen: ontological differences and public health policies in Southern Chile

In this article, I explore different visual practices performed by Pehuenche Indigenous healers and state public health professionals in Southern Chile. While non‐Indigenous health workers seek to make ‘traditional’ Pehuenche healing visible within or alongside their own ‘modern’ practices, Pehuenche people are concerned with making visible the evil spirits whose ‘eating’ of persons produces illness. Focusing in particular on different healing practices triggered by the existence of Pehuenche spiritual illnesses that are ‘seen’ by both Indigenous healers and state professionals, this article discusses how different ontologies ground differences between the Indigenous healers and what they ‘see’; as well as how a broader and substantive binary between Pehuenche and non‐Pehuenche realities goes above and beyond these multiplicities. By exploring and discussing the endurance of Pehuenche cosmo‐political relations in a world inhabited by visible and invisible eaters, I hope to create awareness about how a failure to recognize these different realities limits current multicultural policies in Southern Chile, and Indigenous health policies more broadly. At a more theoretical level, the following ethnographic account sheds light on unresolved tensions between the ways ontological difference has been conceptualized within the so‐called ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology and within the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS).     

Parentage analysis of Ansell's mole‐rat family groups indicates a high reproductive skew despite relatively relaxed ecological constraints on dispersal

To better understand evolutionary pathways leading to eusociality, interspecific comparisons are needed, which would use a common axis, such as that of reproductive skew, to array species. African mole‐rats (Bathyergidae, Rodentia) provide an outstanding model of social evolution because of a wide range of social organizations within a single family; however, their reproductive skew is difficult to estimate, due to their cryptic lifestyle. A maximum skew could theoretically be reached in groups where reproduction is monopolized by a stable breeding pair, but the value could be decreased by breeding‐male and breeding‐female turnover, shared reproduction and extra‐group mating. The frequency of such events should be higher in species or populations inhabiting mesic environments with relaxed ecological constraints on dispersal. To test this prediction, we studied patterns of parentage and relatedness within 16 groups of Ansell's mole‐rat (Fukomys anselli) in mesic miombo woodland. Contrary to expectation, there was no shared reproduction (more than one breeder of a particular sex) within the studied groups, and proportion of immigrants and offspring not assigned to current breeding males was low. The within‐group parentage and relatedness patterns observed resemble arid populations of ‘eusocial’ Fukomys damarensis, rather than a mesic population of ‘social’ Cryptomys hottentotus. As a possible explanation, we propose that the extent ecological conditions affect reproductive skew may be markedly affected by life history and natural history traits of the particular species and genera.     

‘Signs of the times’: confession and the semiotic production of inner truth

How is it that confession – a highly ritualized, dialogically structured speech act – appears to transparently reflect and reveal the inner states of confessants? This article explores this question by closely engaging select post‐Vatican II defences of the Sacrament of Penance, which lay out the requirements of ‘modern’ confession in striking detail. A close reading of these theological texts demonstrates that felicitous confession is the product of three correlated (meta‐)semiotic processes: (1) the figuration of the pentinent memory as a storehouse for sin; (2) the management of ritual time into discrete stages of ‘private’ meaning‐making and ‘public’ pronouncement; and (3) the erasure of the social scenery of the confessional utterance. In concert, these processes render indexical signs as iconic ones and, in so doing, naturalize confession as the cathartic revelation of inner truths, already constituted as such.     

‘Beach-Boy Elders’ and ‘Young Big-Men’: Subverting the Temporalities of Ageing in Kenya's Ethno-Erotic Economies

ABSTRACT

In the 1980s, Samburu men from northern Kenya began migrating to coastal tourist resorts to sell souvenirs and perform traditional dances for European tourists. Many of them engaged in transactional sex or marriages with European women attracted to the image of the exotic African young male warrior. Through relationships with European women, some Samburu men managed to rapidly accumulate wealth, becoming so-called ‘young big-men’. As a way to transform their wealth into more durable forms of respectability, these men used their money to marry local women and speed up their ritual initiation into elderhood. Meanwhile, there also emerged the figure of ‘beach-boy elders’, men who aged before accumulating sufficient wealth. They returned to coastal tourist resorts, dressed as young warriors, and waited to find European partners. In the article, I argue that beach-boy elders and young big-men produce queer moments in the temporalities of ageing, in that they subvert normative expectations of ageing at the very same time that they seek to produce them.     

Body mass and sex‐biased parasitism in wood mice Apodemus sylvaticus

Male sex‐biased parasitism (SBP) occurs across a range of mammalian taxa and two contrasting sets of hypotheses have been suggested for its establishment. The first invokes body size per se and suggests that larger individuals are either a larger target for parasites, trade off growth at the expense of immunity or cope better with parasitism than smaller individuals. The second suggests a sex‐specific handicap whereby males have reduced immunocompetence compared to females due to the immunodepressive effects of testosterone. The current study investigated whether sex‐biased parasitism is driven by host ‘body size’ or ‘sex’ using a rodent–tick (Apodemus sylvaticus–Ixodes ricinus) system. Moreover, the presence or absence of large mammals at study sites were used to control the presence of immature ticks infesting wood mice, allowing the impacts of parasitism on host body mass and female reproduction to be assessed. As expected, male mice had greater tick loads than females and analyses suggested this sex‐bias was driven by body mass as opposed to sex. It is therefore likely that larger individuals are a larger target for parasites, trade off growth at the expense of immunity or adapt behavioural responses to parasitism based on their body size. Parasite load had no effect on host body mass or female reproductive output suggesting individuals may alter behaviour or life history strategies to compensate for costs incurred through parasitism. Overall, this study lends support to the ‘body size’ hypothesis for the formation of sex‐biased parasitism.     

Experience versus effort: what explains dynamic heterogeneity with respect to age?

Age‐related patterns of survival and reproduction have been explained by accumulated experience (‘experience hypothesis’), increased effort (‘effort hypothesis’), and intrinsic differences in phenotypes (‘selection hypothesis’). We examined the experience and effort hypotheses using a 40‐year data set in a population of Leach's storm‐petrels Oceanodroma leucorhoa, long‐lived seabirds for which the effect of phenotypic variation has been previously demonstrated. Age was quantified by time since recruitment (‘breeding age’). The best model of adult survival included a positive effect of breeding age (1, 2, 3+ years), sex (male > female), and year. Among‐individuals variation (fixed heterogeneity) accounted for 31.6% of the variance in annual reproductive success. We further examined within‐individual patterns in reproductive success (dynamic heterogeneity) in the subset of individuals with at least five breeding attempts. Three distinct phases characterized reproductive success – early increase, long asymptotic peak, late decline. No effect of early reproductive output on longevity was found, however, early success was positively correlated with lifetime reproductive success. Reproductive success was lower earlier than later in life. Among the few natally philopatric individuals in the population, age of first breeding had no effect on longevity, lifetime reproductive success, or early reproductive success. No support for the effort hypothesis was found in this population. Instead, age‐specific patterns of survival and reproduction in these birds are best explained by the experience hypothesis over and above the effect of intrinsic differences among individuals.     

Sex ratio,sex‐specific pattern in vegetative growth and gemma production in an aquatic liverwort,Scapania undulata (Marchantiophyta: Scapaniaceae)

Scapania undulata is an aquatic dioicous liverwort growing in shallow streams in boreal to subtropical zones. We studied the expressed sex ratio, sex‐specific differences in shoot architecture and possible trade‐off between sexual and asexual reproduction in ten populations of S. undulata by surveying 100 plots in ten streams in southern Finland. The expressed sex ratio was male biased, in contrast with the sex ratio in most dioicous bryophytes. It was also highly variable between the streams, but individual plots frequently comprised shoots from only one sex. The overproduction of males might be a strategy to overcome sperm dilution and ensure fertilization over longer distances in water. No size differences between females and males were detected, but they differed in branching patterns. Evidence for a higher cost of sexual reproduction in females than males can be seen from the following: the male‐biased sex ratio; low number of sex‐expressing female shoots in female‐only plots; no co‐occurrence of gemmae and female sex organs on a single branch, and no more than one sexual branch per female shoot. In contrast, high gemma production of male and female sex‐expressing shoots indicates a minimal trade‐off between sexual and asexual reproduction. © 2014 The Linnean Society of London, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2014, 175 , 229–241.     

Magico‐spiritual power,female sexuality and ritual sex in Muslim Java: Unveiling the kesekten of magical women

This article argues that in practice, concepts of magico‐spiritual power (Javanese: kesekten; Indonesian: kesaktian) are linked with sexuality, particularly female sexuality, in some segments of contemporary Central and East Javanese Muslim society. Few scholars have turned attention to the interconnectedness of these seemingly contradictory topics. Feminist studies tend to focus on the ways in which women locate themselves within and critique Sharia‐based discursive and social orders, without considering the roles that magico‐spiritual power and associated practices play in these Islamic systems or in Islam in a more general sense. Similarly, male scholarship that considers the cultural relevance of Islam and magic rarely refers to gendered and sexual dimensions as praxis from a feminist perspective. By drawing on examples of ‘magical women’ including the Javanese spirit queen of the southern ocean Gusti Kanjeng Ratu Kidul, the historical Hindu figure Ken Dedes, and contemporary ritual sex practices at a Muslim saint's grave, we show how women, female spiritual beings and female sexuality, and sexuality in general, can be considered sources of magico‐spiritual power in Muslim Java. Our arguments conclude that in Javanese Islam, transgression of Sharia sexual norms can be both a sign and a source of magico‐spiritual power.     

Condition‐dependent mortality exacerbates male (but not female) reproductive senescence and the potential for sexual conflict

Disentangling the relationship between age and reproduction is central to understand life‐history evolution, and recent evidence shows that considering condition‐dependent mortality is a crucial piece of this puzzle. For example, nonrandom mortality of ‘low‐condition’ individuals can lead to an increase in average lifespan. However, selective disappearance of such low‐condition individuals may also affect reproductive senescence at the population level due to trade‐offs between physiological functions related to survival/lifespan and the maintenance of reproductive functions. Here, we address the idea that condition‐dependent extrinsic mortality (i.e. simulated predation) may increase the age‐related decline in male reproductive success and with it the potential for sexual conflict, by comparing reproductive ageing in Drosophila melanogaster male/female cohorts exposed (or not) to condition‐dependent simulated predation across time. Although female reproductive senescence was not affected by predation, male reproductive senescence was considerably higher under predation, due mainly to an accelerated decline in offspring viability of ‘surviving’ males with age. This sex‐specific effect suggests that condition‐dependent extrinsic mortality can exacerbate survival‐reproduction trade‐offs in males, which are typically under stronger condition‐dependent selection than females. Interestingly, condition‐dependent extrinsic mortality did not affect mating success, hinting that accelerated reproductive senescence is due to a decrease in male post‐copulatory fitness components. Our results support the recent proposal that male ageing can be an important source of sexual conflict, further suggesting this effect could be exacerbated under more natural conditions.     

Partitioning of resources: the evolutionary genetics of sexual conflict over resource acquisition and allocation

Fitness depends on both the resources that individuals acquire and the allocation of those resources to traits that influence survival and reproduction. Optimal resource allocation differs between females and males as a consequence of their fundamentally different reproductive strategies. However, because most traits have a common genetic basis between the sexes, conflicting selection between the sexes over resource allocation can constrain the evolution of optimal allocation within each sex, and generate trade‐offs for fitness between them (i.e. ‘sexual antagonism’ or ‘intralocus sexual conflict’). The theory of resource acquisition and allocation provides an influential framework for linking genetic variation in acquisition and allocation to empirical evidence of trade‐offs between distinct life‐history traits. However, these models have not considered the emergence of trade‐offs within the context of sexual dimorphism, where they are expected to be particularly common. Here, we extend acquisition–allocation theory and develop a quantitative genetic framework for predicting genetically based trade‐offs between life‐history traits within sexes and between female and male fitness. Our models demonstrate that empirically measurable evidence of sexually antagonistic fitness variation should depend upon three interacting factors that may vary between populations: (1) the genetic variances and between‐sex covariances for resource acquisition and allocation traits, (2) condition‐dependent expression of resource allocation traits and (3) sex differences in selection on the allocation of resource to different fitness components.     

Under the Law of God: mimesis and mimetic discipleship among Jewish‐affinity Christians

Messianic Judaism, a network of congregations that incorporate Jewish ritual into evangelical worship, is one branch of a fast‐growing trend among Christians globally towards ‘Jewish affinity’. Drawing on a multi‐site comparison in North America, this article examines one of Messianic Judaism's most significant internal debates: should non‐ethnically Jewish ‘gentile believers’ (GBs) obey biblical laws? It argues that GBs do not simply imitate Jews badly, as outsiders and their own leaders often believe. Rather, their actions are best characterized as mimesis in two complementary forms: mimesis of Jews and ‘mimetic discipleship’ of Jesus‐the‐Jew. Taken together, these forms offer a heuristic tool sufficiently capacious to explain both individuals’ propensity for Jewish practice and the socially specific ways it is constructed. I conclude that Jewish affinity reflects a key problem in contemporary Christianity, namely what happens when people in one religion (Christianity) come to believe that their God incarnated in the body of a man they now associate with another religion (Judaism)?     

Dancing with a Difference: Reconfiguring the Poetic Politics of Aboriginal Ritual as National Spectacle1

This paper argues that indigenous dance is a poetic politics of cross‐cultural encounter that engages Aboriginal identities with those of the Australian nation. I question the nature of this encounter in terms of a performative dialogue that is both musically and kinesically presented by indigenous communities and ‘translated’ into political discourse by the government. The sentiments of ‘translation’ raise questions as to how local ritual expressions of Aboriginal dance can mediate dialogue when presented as national spectacle. What is being meditated? What is happening in the process of evocation? In this performative nexus, I focus specifically on the poetic politics of Yolngu ritual as spectacle; the nature of performative dialogue in terms of shared dance forms between indigenous communities; the problem of the authentication of dance identities; and how corporeal dispositions of indigenous dance genres influence national sentiment by their symbolic power. I pursue these issues through an analysis of how ancestral dances have been repositioned in national performance venues, such as concerts, cultural centres and ritual arenas, as a means of asserting performative statements about indigenous positioning within the nation‐state. The nature of this dialogue raises questions of authenticity and processes of authentication. It highlights indigenous concerns to control representations of indigeneity as national event, as well as a desire to convey something of the sentiment and sentience embodied in the poetics of their ancestral performances.     

What lies beneath? Population dynamics conceal pace‐of‐life and sex ratio variation,with implications for resilience to environmental change

Life‐history and pace‐of‐life syndrome theory predict that populations are comprised of individuals exhibiting different reproductive schedules and associated behavioural and physiological traits, optimized to prevailing social and environmental factors. Changing weather and social conditions provide in situ cues altering this life‐history optimality; nevertheless, few studies have considered how tactical, sex‐specific plasticity over an individual's lifespan varies in wild populations and influences population resilience. We examined the drivers of individual life‐history schedules using 31 years of trapping data and 28 years of pedigree for the European badger (Meles meles L.), a long‐lived, iteroparous, polygynandrous mammal that exhibits heterochrony in the timing of endocrinological puberty in male cubs. Our top model for the effects of environmental (social and weather) conditions during a badger's first year on pace‐of‐life explained <10% of variance in the ratio of fertility to age at first reproduction (F/α) and lifetime reproductive success. Conversely, sex ratio (SR) and sex‐specific density explained 52.8% (males) and 91.0% (females) of variance in adult F/α ratios relative to the long‐term population median F/α. Weather primarily affected the sexes at different life‐history stages, with energy constraints limiting the onset of male reproduction but playing a large role in female strategic energy allocation, particularly in relation to ongoing mean temperature increases. Furthermore, the effects of social factors on age of first reproduction and year‐to‐year reproductive success covaried differently with sex, likely due to sex‐specific responses to potential mate availability. For females, low same‐sex densities favoured early primiparity; for males, instead, up to 10% of yearlings successfully mated at high same‐sex densities. We observed substantial SR dynamism relating to differential mortality of life‐history strategists within the population, and propose that shifting ratios of ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ life‐history strategists contribute substantially to population dynamics and resilience to changing conditions.