Trends and developments in physical anthropology, 1990–91

The 1408 members of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists were surveyed by mail regarding professional background, training deficiencies, opinions regarding areas of future importance to the discipline, and teaching/research specializations. A total of 544 responses (39%) resulted; 71% were from professionals in the United States and 16% were from U.S. students. Survey results are compared to surveys done in 1971 and in 1978, and are broken into three cohorts: pre-1971 Ph.D.s, 1972–1978 Ph.D.s, and post-1979 Ph.D.s. Statistics and anatomy continue to be common training deficiencies across cohorts. Molecular/cell biology and writing are new training deficiencies that reflect contemporary concerns and trends in the discipline. Anatomy, genetics, ecology, and paleontology are still considered important to the future of physical anthropology; statistics, computer science, and the biomedical sciences are also thought to be of importance to its future. The most frequent teaching/research specializations are growth and development, evolutionary biology, and population studies. Genetics and primatology appear to be losing popularity; biomedical anthropology, statistics, and ecology appear to be gaining it. The survey results have implications for the future training of graduate students and for employment opportunities in physical anthropology.     

Tunnel Vision: Part One – Resisting post‐colonialism in Australian anthropology

This essay is based on my conviction that Australian ethnography's narrow purview and anthropology's theoretical limitations need exploring and explaining. While internationally the discipline developed new sites, new theoretical fields and new political ideas in the post‐colonial era from around 1970, classicism continued to dominate research in Australia. New forms of Aboriginal social life and politics created by changing ‘post‐colonial’ conditions largely escaped ethnographic attention, but anthropology was rescued from irrelevance with the emergence of opportunities to assist the courts and Aborigines with land retrievals. By examining selected ethnographies and exceptions to the discipline's main trajectory, I hope to encourage reflection and expansion so that the discipline might realise its potential as the most radical and critical of the social sciences.     

Upslope movements and large scale expansions: the taxonomy and biogeography of the Coenonympha arcania –C. d arwiniana –C. gardetta butterfly species complex

Sibling species groups are suitable models for the understanding of inter‐ and intraspecific processes in taxonomy and biogeography. We analysed 262 individuals from the Alps of the Coenonympha arcania/gardetta species complex by allozyme electrophoresis. These taxa showed high variance amongst populations (F_ST: 0.391) and strong intertaxon genetic differentiation (F_CT: 0.376). Although morphologically similar, Coenonympha gardetta and Coenonympha arcania clearly differ in their genetic characteristics; the morphologically intermediate taxa Coenonympha darwiniana darwiniana and Coenonympha darwiniana macromma are genetically well distinguished from each other and the two other taxa. Coenonympha arcania and C. d. macromma most probably share a common ancestor and evolved by cladogenesis, whereas the taxonomic situation of C. d. darwiniana is still unresolved: This taxon might be the result of hybridization between C. arcania and C. gardetta or it might have a common ancestor together with C. gardetta. We suggest species rank for all four taxa. The distribution of genetic diversity of these populations and the differentiation amongst populations suggest rather different biogeographical scenarios: C. arcania most probably is of Mediterranean origin with postglacial range expansion northwards; C. gardetta survived the last ice age in peripheral refugia of the Alps and has spread all over this high mountain system in the postglacial; C. darwiniana and C. macromma survived the Würm in geographic proximity to their actual distribution areas and only have performed moderate uphill translocations during postglacial warming. © 2010 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2010, 159 , 890–904.