United and Divided: Christianity,Tradition and Identity in Two South Coast Papua New Guinea Villages

The Motu and the Hula, two south coast Papua New Guinea societies, are linguistically related, have similar social organisation and were economically linked before European colonisation. They were both introduced to Christianity by the London Missionary Society in the late 19th century, and each appeared to incorporate the new religion into their social life and thought quickly and unproblematically. More than a century later, however, generalities about the similar adoption of Christianity by the Motu and the Hula are no longer possible. Nor are generalities about the engagement with Christianity within one or the other group, as individual Motu and Hula villages have unique histories. In this regard, while Christianity has now arguably become part of putative tradition among the Motu, some Hula are experiencing conflict between Christianity and their sense of tradition. In particular, while in the Motu village of Pari Christian virtues are appealed to as part of Pari's conception of itself as a ‘traditional’ Motu village, the situation in the Hula village of Irupara is more or less the contrary. Many people in Irupara are now lamenting ‘tradition’ as something lost, a forgotten essence destroyed or replaced by Christianity. Based on fieldwork in both villages, this paper discusses some differences in their engagement with Christianity and compares contemporary perceptions of religion, tradition and identity in both societies, informing a commentary on notions of tradition and anthropological representations of the Melanesian experience of Christianity.     

山西崦山自然保护区侧柏群落优势种群种间关系分析

在样方调查的基础上,采用方差比率法、Fisher精确检验、Jaccard指数和Spearman秩相关系数研究了山西阳城崦山自然保护区侧柏群落优势种群的种间关系。结果表明：（1）群落优势种总体呈正关联,但关联性较弱,种的分布具有相对独立性。（2）Fisher精确检验与Jaccard指数结合使用可以取得较好的研究结果。（3）Jaccard指数结果表明在乔、灌、草各层中占据明显优势地位的种群其种间联结程度较大。（4）根据研究结果把侧柏群落的优势种群划分为3个生态种组：白皮松生态种组、侧柏生态种组和白莲蒿生态种组。     

Hyalophysa lynni n. sp. (Ciliophora,Apostomatida), a new pathogenic ciliate and causative agent of shrimp black gill in penaeid shrimp

The parasitic ciliate causing shrimp black gill (sBG) infections in penaeid shrimp has been identified. The sBG ciliate has a unique life cycle that includes an encysted divisional stage on the host’s gills. The ciliature of the encysted trophont stage has been determined and is quite similar to that of the closely related apostomes Hyalophysa bradburyae and H. chattoni. Hyalophysa bradburyae is a commensal ciliate associated with freshwater caridean shrimp and crayfish, while H. chattoni is a common commensal found on North American marine decapods. Based on 18S rRNA gene sequence comparisons, the sBG ciliate is more closely related to the marine species H. chattoni than to the freshwater species H. bradburyae. The unique life cycle, morphology, 18S rRNA gene sequence, hosts, location, and pathology of the sBG ciliate distinguish this organism as a new species, Hyalophysa lynni n. sp.     

Beyond rupture: Christian culture in the Pacific

In its many forms, Christianity tends to focus adherents’ attention upon earlier religious traditions, compelling them to renew their faith, repent and seek redemption. This special issue takes up questions about Christianity’s temporal ‘secondarity’. Contributors move beyond increasingly futile theoretical debates about rupture and continuity by considering how Christians in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands conceptualise and enact their fraught relationships with prior religious traditions. By examining the place of culture within Christianity, contributors avoid the analytical pitfalls of assuming that Pacific culture is not already thoroughly Christian. Rather than taking up questions about initial Christian conversion, these articles focus on revival. The relentless campaigns of Christian renewal that have transformed religious landscapes more than a generation aim not only to overcome pre‐Christian powers, but also to supersede earlier versions of Christianity. In examining not only highly localised ethnotheologies, but also regional movements, this issue opens questions that should be of interest beyond the anthropology of Christianity.     

Chemical repellency and adverse effects of free-floating macrophytes on the cladoceran Ceriodaphnia dubia under two temperature levels

Macrophytes can structure biological assemblages in subtropical lakes. Zooplankton often uses them as a refuge, but in the absence of predators many species frequently avoid them. It is hypothesized that plant exudates can act as “repellent factors” because they can be detrimental to the animals’ life history. This work aimed to test both assumptions: whether exudates of two free-floating species, Eichhornia crassipes and Salvinia biloba, repel the cladoceran Ceriodaphnia dubia and whether they affect its life history. Furthermore, given the possibility that increasing temperatures can modify the observed responses, the experimental research was carried out at two temperature levels: 21 and 25 (±1) °C. First, an avoidance experiment was performed inside narrow aquaria containing the plants, so that repellence was analyzed according to the location of animals after 30, 60 and 90 min. Second, for the life cycle experiments, cladocerans were raised in macrophyte-conditioned water and their lifespan, growth and reproduction were daily monitored. Macrophytes’ exudates effectively repelled C. dubia and affected its life history by decreasing its life expectancy, increasing the age at first reproduction and lowering the number of eggs per female. The magnitude of such effects depended on the treatment, i.e. both plants together caused more negative effects than E. crassipes alone, and this latter was more negative than S. biloba. At higher temperature, the negative effects were intensified but C. dubia maintained the same order of sensitivity to each treatment. This suggests that temperature variations, within a tolerance range, do not alter the allelopathic interactions between the studied species.     

Mines and Monsters: A Dialogue on Development in Western Province,Papua New Guinea

This article analyses an internal debate between Gogodala villagers, Western Province, Papua New Guinea, in which they explore the concept of development through a dialogue that revolves around ela gi or ‘way of life’. The analysis focuses on two developmental projects: the Ok Tedi gold and copper mine, which affects eight Gogodala villages on the lower Fly River, and a test oil drill carried out among northern Gogodala villages in 1995. I propose that it is through ela gi, a lifestyle that encompasses an evangelical Christianity as well as the actions of the first ancestors and is based on a bodily experience of the environment, that community development is envisaged and debated. Whilst the oil drill in the north is discussed in terms of approval, villagers on the Fly River to the south are increasingly concerned about changes to their lifestyle and landscape. They explore this ambivalence through a discussion of the movements and moods of ancestrally‐derived ‘monsters’ or ugu lopala, creatures who patrol the waterways of both north and south villages. At the same time, Gogodala from both communities are articulating what the transition from ‘living on sago’ to a lifestyle based on money might mean. This dialogue foregrounds an ongoing debate about the roles that the environment, village practices, the ancestral past and Christianity play in the constitution of the Gogodala way of life, and how these factors may initiate a certain kind of development.     

Changes in the taxonomic diversity of the reef fish community of San José Island, Gulf of California, Mexico

Although San José Island is considered one of the most important islands in the lower Gulf of California due to its commercial fishing activities, few studies have evaluated their fish taxonomic diversity. The aim of this study was to determine the variation in the taxonomic diversity of the conspicuous fish community in eight locations around San José Island from March 2001 to February 2002. We assessed the changes in the diversity of rocky reef fish based on the taxonomic distances between species, using Fisher’s alpha diversity index, average taxonomic distinctiveness (AvTD Δ+), and taxonomic distinctiveness (Δ*). Visual censuses were conducted in 48 transects consisting of 100?×?5?m quadrants (500?m² sampling area) at an average depth of 5?m, from 09:00 to 16:00. A total of 26,608 fishes belonging to 112 species and 76 genera were found. The index of relative abundance was used to determine the most important species, which were in order of abundance: Abudefduf troschelii, Thalassoma lucasanum, Stegastes rectifraenum, Mulloidichthys dentatus, Chromis atrilobata, Lutjanus argentiventris, and Scarus ghobban. According to Fisher’s alpha diversity index, the highest diversity of species was found in July and the lowest in February. The indices of Δ+ and Δ* indicated significant temporal and spatial differences.     

Vitalism and the Resistance to Experimentation on Life in the Eighteenth Century

There is a familiar opposition between a ‘Scientific Revolution’ ethos and practice of experimentation, including experimentation on life, and a ‘vitalist’ reaction to this outlook. The former is often allied with different forms of mechanism – if all of Nature obeys mechanical laws, including living bodies, ‘iatromechanism’ should encounter no obstructions in investigating the particularities of animal-machines – or with more chimiatric theories of life and matter, as in the ‘Oxford Physiologists’. The latter reaction also comes in different, perhaps irreducibly heterogeneous forms, ranging from metaphysical and ethical objections to the destruction of life, as in Margaret Cavendish, to more epistemological objections against the usage of instruments, the ‘anatomical’ outlook and experimentation, e.g. in Locke and Sydenham. But I will mainly focus on a third anti-interventionist argument, which I call ‘vitalist’ since it is often articulated in the writings of the so-called Montpellier Vitalists, including their medical articles for the Encyclopédie. The vitalist argument against experimentation on life is subtly different from the metaphysical, ethical and epistemological arguments, although at times it may borrow from any of them. It expresses a Hippocratic sensibility – understood as an artifact of early modernity, not as some atemporal trait of medical thought – in which Life resists the experimenter, or conversely, for the experimenter to grasp something about Life, it will have to be without torturing or radically intervening in it. I suggest that this view does not have to imply that Nature is something mysterious or sacred; nor does the vitalist have to attack experimentation on life in the name of some ‘vital force’ – which makes it less surprising to find a vivisectionist like Claude Bernard sounding so close to the vitalists.     

Convergent Surface Water Distributions in U.S. Cities

Earth’s surface is rapidly urbanizing, resulting in dramatic changes in the abundance, distribution and character of surface water features in urban landscapes. However, the scope and consequences of surface water redistribution at broad spatial scales are not well understood. We hypothesized that urbanization would lead to convergent surface water abundance and distribution: in other words, cities will gain or lose water such that they become more similar to each other than are their surrounding natural landscapes. Using a database of more than 1 million water bodies and 1 million km of streams, we compared the surface water of 100 US cities with their surrounding undeveloped land. We evaluated differences in areal (A _WB) and numeric densities (N _WB) of water bodies (lakes, wetlands, and so on), the morphological characteristics of water bodies (size), and the density (D _C) of surface flow channels (that is, streams and rivers). The variance of urban A _WB, N _WB, and D _C across the 100 MSAs decreased, by 89, 25, and 71%, respectively, compared to undeveloped land. These data show that many cities are surface water poor relative to undeveloped land; however, in drier landscapes urbanization increases the occurrence of surface water. This convergence pattern strengthened with development intensity, such that high intensity urban development had an areal water body density 98% less than undeveloped lands. Urbanization appears to drive the convergence of hydrological features across the US, such that surface water distributions of cities are more similar to each other than to their surrounding landscapes.     

Wave-Block Due to a Threshold Gradient Underlies Limited Coordination in Pancreatic Islets

Two models for coupled pancreatic β cells are used to investigate excited wave propagation in spatially inhomogeneous islets of Langerhans. The application concerns spatial variation of glucose concentration across the islet. A comprehensive model of coupled cells shows that wave blocking occurs as the conductance of adenosine triphosphate regulated potassium channels increases, corresponding to spatially decreasing glucose concentration. A simplified model based on a perturbed version of Fisher’s equation has been investigated using perturbation theory. We show that the perturbed Fisher’s equation likewise can exhibit wave blocking.     

Social environment and weather during early life influence gastro-intestinal parasite loads in a group-living mammal

Conditions experienced during early life have been frequently shown to exert long-term consequences on an animal’s fitness. In mammals and birds, the time around and shortly after weaning is one of the crucial periods early in life. However, little is known about how social and abiotic environmental conditions experienced around this time affect fitness-related traits such as endoparasite loads. We studied consequences of social interactions and rainy weather conditions around and after weaning on gastro-intestinal nematode loads in juvenile European rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus. Infestations with the gastric nematode Graphidium strigosum and with the intestinal nematode Passalurus ambiguus were higher in animals experiencing more rain during early life. This might have been due to the higher persistence of nematodes’ infective stages outside the host body together with the animals’ lower energy allocation for immune defence under more humid and thus energetically challenging conditions. In contrast, infestations with P. ambiguus were lower in animals with more positive social interactions with mother and litter siblings. We propose that social support provided by familiar group members buffered negative stress effects on immune function, lowering endoparasite infestations. This is supported by the negative correlation between positive social behaviour and serum corticosterone concentrations, indicating lower stress in juveniles which integrated more successfully into the social network of their group. In conclusion, the findings offer a pathway showing how differences in the abiotic environment and social life conditions experienced early in life could translate into long-term fitness consequences via the effects on endoparasite loads.     

Comment arising from a paper by Wittmer et al.: hypothesis testing for top-down and bottom-up effects in woodland caribou population dynamics

Asexual fungal endophytes, which do not produce reproductive structures, spread in host populations only vertically via the propagules of their hosts. With such a close relationship between the fitness of the asexual endophyte and that of the host, the relationship is traditionally thought to be mutualistic. Here we present data showing that the positive effect of asexual endophytes may concern only a short period of the host’s life and that its lifetime reproductive success may be reduced. We followed 180 individuals of a perennial grass, Puccinellia distans, for the first 3 years of their growth both in the field and in a common garden experiment. In the first 2 years, infected individuals produced more generative shoots with longer inflorescences. Three-year-old individuals produced significantly fewer generative shoots with shorter inflorescences when infected with the fungus Epichloë typhina. Moreover, the dry mass of above- and belowground parts after three seasons was significantly lower in infected individuals. We suggest that if the endophyte retains control over plant reproduction and if shorter generation time is more crucial for the fungus than for the perennial host, then the fungus should stimulate plant reproduction early in life even though infection incurs a future cost. This reasoning suggests that discovering an endophyte’s beneficial effect on its perennial host in one season provides insufficient grounds for concluding that a mutualistic relationship exists.     

Change and Chisungu in Zambia's Time of AIDS

Through an examination of amafunde – a Bemba word meaning ‘instruction’, which refers to the training given to a young woman before her marriage – this article explores the social changes that have followed widespread HIV infection on the Zambian Copperbelt. Amafunde today are marked by openness between senior women and those they train for marriage, an openness that they encourage their charges to adopt in married life. This emphasis on direct or ‘straight’ speech stands in stark contrast to earlier accounts of female initiation in Zambia, which highlight ‘obscure’ modes of communication. An analysis of this change reveals the increased importance of both secrecy and disclosure in Zambia's time of AIDS, as well as the influence of Pentecostal Christianity. Most importantly, it indexes changes in the social forms that the interplay of secrecy and disclosure has traditionally produced.     

Coarse Grained Normal Mode Analysis vs. Refined Gaussian Network Model for Protein Residue-Level Structural Fluctuations

We investigate several approaches to coarse grained normal mode analysis on protein residual-level structural fluctuations by choosing different ways of representing the residues and the forces among them. Single-atom representations using the backbone atoms C _α , C, N, and C _β are considered. Combinations of some of these atoms are also tested. The force constants between the representative atoms are extracted from the Hessian matrix of the energy function and served as the force constants between the corresponding residues. The residue mean-square-fluctuations and their correlations with the experimental B-factors are calculated for a large set of proteins. The results are compared with all-atom normal mode analysis and the residue-level Gaussian Network Model. The coarse-grained methods perform more efficiently than all-atom normal mode analysis, while their B-factor correlations are also higher. Their B-factor correlations are comparable with those estimated by the Gaussian Network Model and in many cases better. The extracted force constants are surveyed for different pairs of residues with different numbers of separation residues in sequence. The statistical averages are used to build a refined Gaussian Network Model, which is able to predict residue-level structural fluctuations significantly better than the conventional Gaussian Network Model in many test cases.     

The Cultural Importance of Plants in Western African Religions

This paper explores the importance of elements of the natural world, and particularly plants, among people of different religious affiliations in western Africa. Plants play an overriding role in African folk religions, which in turn are closely associated with health practices and influence management decisions concerning natural resources. In spite of the extensive literature documenting ritual plant use, the cultural importance of plants in this context has not been systematically assessed. Our objective was to see whether the importance of plants was reflected in people’s conceptions of global (i.e., Christianity, Islam) and folk religions (i.e., Vodoun and Bwiti) in Benin (West Africa) and Gabon (Central Africa). By performing a cultural domain analysis (CDA) with 96 individuals, we found that, regardless of the religious affiliation of informants, plants and other elements of the natural world were more present in people’s notions of folk religions than in global religions. We conclude by reflecting on the potentials and limitations of the data presented here as a starting point to explore the topic of cultural keystone species.     

Associations between reproduction and work in workers of the Asian hive bee Apis cerana

If a honey bee (Apis spp.) colony becomes queenless, about 1/3 of young workers activate their ovaries and produce haploid male-producing eggs. In doing so queenless workers maximize their inclusive fitness because the normal option of vicarious production of relatives via their queen’s eggs is no longer available. But if many workers are engaged in reproduction, how does a queenless colony continue to feed its brood and forage? Here we show that in the Asian hive bee Apis cerana hypopharyngeal gland (HPG) size is larger in queenless workers than in queenright workers and that bees undertaking brood-rearing tasks have larger HPG than same-aged bees that are foraging. In queenless colonies, workers with a smaller number of ovarioles are more likely to have activated ovaries. This reinforces the puzzling observation that a large number of ovarioles reduces reproductive success in queenless A. cerana. It further suggests that reproductive workers either avoid foraging or transition to foraging later in life than non-reproductive workers. Finally, our study also showed that ovary activation and larger-than-average numbers of ovarioles had no statistically detectable influence on foraging specialization for pollen or nectar.     

Pluralism in evolutionary controversies: styles and averaging strategies in hierarchical selection theories

Two controversies exist regarding the appropriate characterization of hierarchical and adaptive evolution in natural populations. In biology, there is the Wright–Fisher controversy over the relative roles of random genetic drift, natural selection, population structure, and interdemic selection in adaptive evolution begun by Sewall Wright and Ronald Aylmer Fisher. There is also the Units of Selection debate, spanning both the biological and the philosophical literature and including the impassioned group-selection debate. Why do these two discourses exist separately, and interact relatively little? We postulate that the reason for this schism can be found in the differing focus of each controversy, a deep difference itself determined by distinct general styles of scientific research guiding each discourse. That is, the Wright–Fisher debate focuses on adaptive process, and tends to be instructed by the mathematical modeling style, while the focus of the Units of Selection controversy is adaptive product, and is typically guided by the function style. The differences between the two discourses can be usefully tracked by examining their interpretations of two contested strategies for theorizing hierarchical selection: horizontal and vertical averaging.     

Culture-independent analysis of an endophytic core microbiome in two species of wheat: Triticum aestivum L. (cv. ‘Hondia’) and the first report of microbiota in Triticum spelta L. (cv. ‘Rokosz’)

The main goal of the study was to determine the structure of endophytic bacteria inhabiting different parts (endosperm, germ, roots, coleoptiles, and leaves) of two wheat species, Triticum aestivum L. (cv. ‘Hondia’) and Triticum spelta L. (cv. ‘Rokosz’), in order to provide new knowledge about the stability and/or changeability of the core microbiome in different plant organs. The endophytic core microbiome is associated with plants throughout their whole life cycle; however, plant organs can determine the actual endophytic community. Therefore, next generation sequencing with MiSeq Illumina technology was applied to identify the endophytic microbiome of T. aestivum and T. spelta. Bioinformatic analyses were performed with the use of the DADA2(1.8) package and R software (3.5.1).It was demonstrated that wheat, which is an important crop plant, was associated with beneficial endophytic bacteria inside the endosperms, germs, roots, leaves, and coleoptiles. Importantly, for the first time, biodiversity was recognized in the coleoptiles of the investigated wheat species. Flavobacterium, Pseudomonas and Janthinobacterium were shown to be common genera for both tested wheat cultivars. Among them, Pseudomonas was found to be the only endophytic genus accompanying both wheat species from the endosperm stage to the development of the leaf. Paenibacillus was recognized as a core genus for the ‘Hondia’ cv., whereas Pedobacter and Duganella constituted the core microbiome in the ‘Rokosz’ cv. In addition, the first insight into the unique and yet unrecognized endophytic microbiome of T. spelta is presented.     

Shell form,growth and life span of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Astarte arctica</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">A. borealis</Emphasis> (Mollusca: Bivalvia) from the subtidal zone of northeastern Sakhalin

This study investigates changes in body proportions during ontogenesis of the bivalves Astarte arctica and A. borealis from the subtidal zone of northeastern Sakhalin. Marked differences in the shell form of bivalves were found. The shell of A. arctica is convex and compact, shell length and height are comparable, and shell width is more than 50% of shell height. A. borealis has a slightly elongate and flattened shell, its width is less than 50% of its height. Shell proportions can provide a reliable criterion for differentiating the species. Mollusks grow at nearly the same rate but attain different maximum sizes. Linear growth is described by Bertalanffy’s equation: L_t = 48.2[1 ? e ^{?0.4850(t ? 0.4396)}] for A. arctica and L_t = 53.1[1 ? e^{?0.4106(t ? 0.4253)}] for A. borealis. In northeastern Sakhalin, the life span of A. arctica is 7 years and of A. borealis, 8 years. By life span, the two bivalve species from Sakhalin slightly differ from their counterparts in other regions, particularly the arctic seas.