Time,False Noses and Skyrockets: The `Skyrocket Song‘ of Northeast Thailand in its Cultural Context

We present the text of the ribald song sung during the Skyrocket Festival of Northeast Thailand, and discuss the implications of the text as it relates to overt and covert functions of this festival. Contrary to Tambiah and other writers, we conclude that the festival is a complex, multifunctional one in which the crudity of the song and other related behaviour plays a central part.     

Blackbird Repellency of Selected Registered Pesticides

Abstract: Bird depredation of agricultural crops is a worldwide problem. New strategies to include chemical repellents are needed to mitigate crop losses. We evaluated 3 preplant seed treatments (Apron XL® LS [Syngenta Crop Protection, Greensboro, NC], Dividend Extreme® [Syngenta], and Maxim® 4 FS [Syngenta]), one foliar insecticide (Karate® with Zeon Technology™ [Syngenta]), and one foliar fungicide (Tilt® [Syngenta]) as potential blackbird repellents in caged feeding trials and a field study. For all repellents tested, red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) discriminated between untreated and treated rice during preference testing in captivity. We observed a positive concentration-response relationship among birds offered rice treated with 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, or 200% of the manufacturer label for Dividend Extreme, Karate, and Tilt. Relative to pretreatment, blackbirds ate 32% and 69% less rice treated with 100% and 200% Tilt label rates, respectively, during the concentration-response test. Maximum repellency of Dividend Extreme and Karate was 55% at 200% of their label rates. We observed no repellency of a combination of Apron and Maxim at 25–200% label rates during the concentration-response test. We subsequently measured rice crop consumption and propiconazole (active ingredient, Tilt) residues among 10 plots (i.e., netted enclosures) populated with red-winged blackbirds within a maturing rice field. Average mass of rice harvested between treated (Tilt) and untreated subplots did not differ. We recovered an average of 12.3 μg/g propiconazole immediately following the first application and 20.2 μ g/g propiconazole immediately following the second application of Tilt. We recovered <0.1 μ g/g propiconazole on 15 August 2006, just before populating plots with blackbirds. Thus, the label application of Tilt fungicide did not reduce blackbird consumption within a maturing rice field, and residues of the active ingredient were insufficient for repellent efficacy. Additional studies are needed to determine whether higher concentrations of Tilt repel blackbirds under field conditions and to evaluate other potential repellents for protection of newly planted and ripening crops.     

Teleostean Interrelationships, Morphological Function and Evolutionary Inference

SYNOPSIS. Notions of functional and behavioral transformationsamong traits of similar organisms are ad hoc unless viewed withinthe context of a corroborated scheme of relationships of thetaxa involved. For purposes of exposition a current best estimateof the interrelationships of the main groups of teleosts (asexpressed by a branching diagram or cladogram) is used as abasis for evaluating the transformations of feeding and locomotormechanisms. When the various states of these mechanisms areincorporated into the branching structure, the cladogram, wheninterpreted historically, specifies certain conceptual constraintssuch that, 1) specializations of the upper jaw first arose andproliferated before specializations of the paired fins, and2) that fin spines arose only after changes in both feedingand locomotor mechanisms were well under way. These resultsare contrasted with familiar though unsupported adaptationiststatements about the relative importance of locomotor and feedingmechanisms for the evolution of the spiny-finned teleosts (acanthopterygians)—acontrast between the interpretation of what happened as opposedto why it happened. The particular reasons why a given structure,function or behavior exists are unknowable and theories addressingsuch questions are untestable. Adaptationist arguments in generalare framed in terms of forces external to the organism whichimpose a process of change that leads to good design. The conceptof an external agency or process (such as selection) that candesign structures or whole organisms to fit their environments,even when stated in rigorously biological language, are effectivelythe same, and almost as far removed from the empirical data,as the creationist argument for adaptation. To the extent thatthe empirical data of systematics are not allowed to constrainthe evolutionary interpretation of functional anatomists, theirexplanation of historical change will be limited only by theirown inventiveness and the gullibility of their audience.