Gorilla gorilla

Assessment Information: Justification: Gorilla gorillahas a large geographic range, covering over 700,000 km². The size of the population is currently being evaluated, but thought to be in the order of a few hundred thousand (Strindberg et al. in prep). Only a very small number of Western Gorillas are the G. g. diehli subspecies, therefore this rationale focuses on the G. g. gorilla subspecies. The country of Gabon lost over half its Gorilla population between 1983 and 2000 (Walsh et al. 2003). More recent population declines have been estimated using a predictive model that incorporated survey data collected between 2003 and 2013 across the entire range of Western Lowland Gorillas. The results reveal an 18.75% decline between 2005 and 2013, corresponding to an annual loss of ~2.56% (Strindberg et al. in prep). These population decreases were driven by poaching and disease (Ebolavirus) outbreaks.Despite their abundance and wide geographic range, Western Gorillas qualify as Critically Endangered under criterion A: a population reduction of more than 80% over three generations (one generation is ~22 years). This listing is based on ongoing population losses due to illegal hunting, disease and habitat loss: poaching is intensifying with the expansion of access routes into forests and Zaire Ebolavirus remains a highly significant threat. At a conservative rate of reduction (2.56% per year rather than 4%, calculated from Walsh et al. 2003), the reduction in the Western Gorilla population is predicted to exceed 80% over three generations (i.e., 66 years, 2005-2071). Illegal hunting has not ceased despite intense anti-poaching efforts, and the threat of Ebolavirus has not been removed. In addition, the scale of habitat conversion to industrial agriculture will increase, and the effects of climate change will become more evident.Gorilla gorillathus qualifies as Critically Endangered (A4bcde)

Once Upon a Time in 1994: Distribution and Medial Reception of the Film Pulp Fiction in the Czech Republic

Tato práce zkoumá prostřednictvím metod orální historie a diskurzivní analýzy průběh distribuce a mediální recepci filmu Quentina Tarantina Pulp Fiction - Historky z podsvětí v českém prostředí během jeho premiérového uvedení v roce 1994. Na tomto příkladu se věnuje pozici amerického/hollywoodského filmu v daném čase a na daném místě, tématu kontaktu dvou rozdílných kultur a mechanismu přijetí/nepřijetí jedné druhou v dynamickém období kulturní i ekonomické transformace po listopadové revoluci roku 1989.This thesis examines the process of the distribution and media reception of the film Pulp Fiction directed by Quentin Tarantino in the Czech environment during its premiere in 1994 using methods of oral history and discourse analysis. This example is the resource for the wider range of questions relating to the position of American/Hollywood cinema in the determined time and space, to the contact of two different cultures and mechanism of acceptance/non-acceptance of each other in the turbulent period of cultural and economic transformation after the Velvet Revolution in the year 1989.Katedra filmových studiíFilm Studies DepartmentFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Conditional Allocation of Control Rights in Venture Capital Finance

When a young entrepreneurial firm matures, it is often necessary to replace the founding entrepreneur by a professional manager. This replacement decision can be affected by the private benefits of control enjoyed by the entrepreneur which gives rise to a conflict of interest between the entrepreneur and the venture capitalist. We show that a combination of convertible securities and contingent control rights can be used to resolve this conflict efficiently. This contractual arrangement is frequently observed in venture capital finance

A Study Of The Effect Of Teaching The Science Research Associates Reading Laboratory IIc On The Reading Ability Of Deaf Students

It was the purpose of this research to investigate, using a control group design, the effectiveness of the use of a structured approach in the teaching of reading to deaf pupils. It consisted of the administration to all subjects of a pre-test, the establishment of experimental and control groups, the application of instruction in the Science Research Associates Reading Laboratory IIc daily, for nine weeks, and the administration of a post-test to all subjects. The effectiveness of the treatment was determined by gain scores, statistically treated

A Soft Budget Constraint Explanation for the Venture Capital Cycle

We explore why venture capital funds limit the amount of capital they raise and do not reinvest the proceeds. This structure is puzzling because it leads to a succession of several funds financing each new venture which multiplies the well known agency problems. We argue that an inside investor cannot provide a hard budget constraint while a less well informed outsider can. Therefore, the venture capitalist delegates the continuation decision to the outsider by ex ante restricting the amount of capital he has under management. The soft budget constraint problem becomes the more important the higher the entrepreneur’s private benefits are and the higher the probability of failure of a project is

Regional Action Plan for the Conservation of the Cross River Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli)

From Executive Summary: This document represents the consensus of experts who met at a workshop in April 2006 in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria, to formulate a set of priority actions that would increase the survival prospects for the Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli). The Cross River gorilla is recognized by IUCN as Critically Endangered, and is the most threatened taxon of ape in Africa. It is the most westerly and northerly form of gorilla, and occurs only in a limited area around the mountainous headwaters of the Cross River, straddling the border between Cameroon and Nigeria. Participants at the 2006 workshop, which built upon the outcomes of previous meetings in Calabar in 2001 and Limbe, Cameroon, in 2003, included representatives of forestry and wildlife conservation agencies from the two range countries, of local and international nongovernmental conservation and development organizations, and of university-based researchers

Revised Regional Action Plan for the Conservation of the Cross River Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli) 2014–2019

This plan outlines measures that should ensure that Cross River gorilla numbers are able to increase at key core sites, allowing them to extend into areas where they have been absent for many years

The complex Y-chromosomal history of gorillas

Studies of the evolutionary relationships among gorilla populations using autosomal and mitochondrial sequences suggest that male-mediated gene flow may have been important in the past, but data on the Y-chromosomal relationships among the gorilla subspecies are limited. Here, we genotyped blood and noninvasively collected fecal samples from 12 captives and 257 wild male gorillas of known origin representing all four subspecies (Gorilla gorilla gorilla, G. g. diehli, G. beringei beringei, and G. b. graueri) at 10 Y-linked microsatellite loci resulting in 102 unique Y-haplotypes for 224 individuals. We found that western lowland gorilla (G. g. gorilla) haplotypes were consistently more diverse than any other subspecies for all measures of diversity and comprised several genetically distinct groups. However, these did not correspond to geographical proximity and some closely related haplotypes were found several hundred kilometers apart. Similarly, our broad sampling of eastern gorillas revealed that mountain (G. b. beringei) and Grauer's (G. b. graueri) gorilla Y-chromosomal haplotypes did not form distinct clusters. These observations suggest structure in the ancestral population with subsequent mixing of differentiated haplotypes by male dispersal for western lowland gorillas, and postisolation migration or incomplete lineage sorting due to short divergence times for eastern gorillas

Historical sampling reveals dramatic demographic changes in western gorilla populations

Background: Today many large mammals live in small, fragmented populations, but it is often unclear whether this subdivision is the result of long-term or recent events. Demographic modeling using genetic data can estimate changes in long-term population sizes while temporal sampling provides a way to compare genetic variation present today with that sampled in the past. In order to better understand the dynamics associated with the divergences of great ape populations, these analytical approaches were applied to western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and in particular to the isolated and Critically Endangered Cross River gorilla subspecies (G. g. diehli).Results: We used microsatellite genotypes from museum specimens and contemporary samples of Cross River gorillas to infer both the long-term and recent population history. We find that Cross River gorillas diverged from the ancestral western gorilla population ~17,800 years ago (95% HDI: 760, 63,245 years). However, gene flow ceased only ~420 years ago (95% HDI: 200, 16,256 years), followed by a bottleneck beginning ~320 years ago (95% HDI: 200, 2,825 years) that caused a 60-fold decrease in the effective population size of Cross River gorillas. Direct comparison of heterozygosity estimates from museum and contemporary samples suggests a loss of genetic variation over the last 100 years.Conclusions: The composite history of western gorillas could plausibly be explained by climatic oscillations inducing environmental changes in western equatorial Africa that would have allowed gorilla populations to expand over time but ultimately isolate the Cross River gorillas, which thereafter exhibited a dramatic population size reduction. The recent decrease in the Cross River population is accordingly most likely attributable to increasing anthropogenic pressure over the last several hundred years. Isolation of diverging populations with prolonged concomitant gene flow, but not secondary admixture, appears to be a typical characteristic of the population histories of African great apes, including gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos