Spatial relationships among members of a population of wall lizards

Summary Wall lizards occupied overlapping territories, the size of which seemed to vary directly with the dominance level of the individual. Average territories of both males and females encompassed about 25 square meters. The overlap in territories among males was about 8 percent, and among females, about 18 percent. When both sexes were considered, overlap was 100 percent. This spacing mechanism appeared to be effective in governing the number of resident males but less so in governing number of resident females.In each of three years, females outnumbered males by 3.5 to one, probably because, among non-resident individuals, males were forced to move about more than females in order to avoid resident males, and as a consequence were subjected to greater predation pressure. Of 47 lizards marked on the study area, 60 percent were resident; the remainder were apparently wandering in search of unoccupied habitat.The number of resident lizards increased over the 5-year period of study from 10 to 21 individuals. Over the same period the average snout-to-vent length of this population decreased from 70.7 mm to 68.2 mm among males and 63.2 mm to 57.3 mm among females, probably reflecting a younger age structure. Correlated with these changes in population size was an increase in predation pressure from feral cats as reflected in the incidence of caudal autotomy among lizards.     

An ‘authentic’ Aboriginal product: State marketing and the self‐fashioning of Indigenous experiences to Chinese tourists

China's burgeoning outbound tourist market has become a priority for Australian tourism, with national and state tourism reports advocating for ‘China‐ready’ marketing, policy and planning and increased industry training around Chinese consumer behaviour and preferences to capitalise on this market. However, studies demonstrate that Chinese tourists are generally not interested in Indigenous tourism experiences. Nevertheless, the state of Victoria is adamant about investing in Indigenous‐themed tourism products which are considered appropriate for Chinese preferences in an attempt to attract tourists from this growing inbound market. This article presents a review of relevant state government policies relating to Indigenous tourism alongside a case study of the tourism experiences developed and provided by Gunditjmara people along the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in southwest Victoria. We demonstrate the ways that notions of ‘authenticity’ continue to shape, and constrain, Indigenous economic engagement and participation via tourism, and discuss the impact of these notions on the provision of Indigenous tourism products and experiences for Chinese and other visitors. We argue that the marketing of Gunditjmara tourism to fluctuating market demand highlights the arbitrariness of Australian governments' policies with respect to Indigenous development, and call for policymakers to focus renewed attention on the local aspirations of Indigenous entrepreneurs.     

The use of Taylor's power law to describe the aggregated distribution of gastro-intestinal nematodes of sheep.

The distribution of gastro-intestinal nematodes collected from lambs was investigated using the Taylor's power law index of aggregation beta, which is known to be independent of the mean population size. For 12 out of the 15 nematode species investigated the estimate of beta was not significantly different from 2.0. For these species a logarithmic transformation would stabilize the variance of the distributions prior to further statistical analysis. The remaining species had values of beta which were significantly lower than 2.0. For these species a variance-stabilizing transformation is given by z = x1-beta/2.     

Evolutionary shifts in copepod acid tolerance in an acid-recovering lake indicated by resurrected resting eggs

We employed zooplankton resting eggs to track population-level shifts in acid tolerance over the last century in a boreal shield lake recovering from acidification. Shifts in mean and variance of ecological tolerances of species that occupy ecosystems recovering from anthropogenic stress are important to consider because of their potential to influence eco-evolutionary dynamics at community and ecosystem levels. In a laboratory experiment, we compared juvenile survival of Leptodiaptomus minutus copepods hatched from resting eggs from three time periods (80- to 100-year- old: pre-industrial, 20- to 50-year- old: lake acidification, and 8- to 10-year- old: recovery of lake-water back to pH ≥ 6.0) under several pH treatments. Mitochondrial DNA was used to confirm species identity and to test for population bottlenecks as a possible mechanism to explain our results. We expected that nauplii hatched from eggs deposited prior to industrialization (lake-water pH ≈ 6.0) and from the period of pH recovery (lake-water pH ≥ 6.0) would have lower mean and more variable survival at acidic pH compared to nauplii hatched from the period of peak lake acidification (lake-water pH ≈ 4.7). Our results, which are likely a combination of both genetic and environmental effects, suggest support for this hypothesis. Nauplii hatched from eggs deposited during the period of acidification in George Lake had reduced variation in pH tolerance compared to the recovery period. This was likely driven by strong selection rather than genetic drift because we found no evidence of a population bottleneck. However, we could not detect differences in the variance of naupliar survival between pre-industrial and acidic time periods. Trends in mean naupliar survival from different time periods matched findings from other field-based studies that detected a relationship between lake acidification history and acid tolerance in L. minutus.     

A Molecular Phylogeny of Warbling-Finches (Poospiza): Paraphyly in a Neotropical Emberizid Genus

We investigated the phylogenetic relationships of 12 species within a single genus of neotropical passerine (Poospiza) using 849 bp (283 codons) of the cytochrome b mitochondrial gene. We further explored evolutionary affinities of these taxa using sequence from an additional 47 thraupine (tanagers) and 7 emberizine (sparrows and buntings) genera, members of the predominantly New World family Emberizidae. Poospiza have traditionally been considered part of the emberizine radiation. However, our analyses suggest that members of this genus are more closely related to some thraupine lineages than they are to the other neotropical emberizine genera included in our study (Atlapetes, Embernagra, Melopyrrha, Phrygilus, Saltatricula, Tiaris). Although member taxa are closely related, the genus Poospiza appears to be paraphyletic with representatives of 6 thraupine genera (Cnemoscopus, Cypsnagra, Hemispingus, Nephelornis, Pyrrhocoma, Thylpopsis) interspersed among four well-supported Poospiza clades. The majority of species within this Poospiza–thraupine clade have geographic ranges that are exclusive to, or partially overlap with, the Andes Mountains. It is probable that these mountains have played an important role in driving cladogenesis within this group. Sequence divergence (transversions only; mean 4.7 ± 1.3%) within the clade suggests that much of this diversification occurred within the late Miocene and Pliocene, a period coincident with major orogenic activity in central-western South America.