CAN DOMESTICATION OF WILDLIFE LEAD TO CONSERVATION? THE ECONOMICS OF TIGER FARMING IN CHINA

Tigers are a threatened species that might soon disappear in the wild. Not only are tigers threatened by deteriorating and declining habitat, but poachers continue to kill tigers for traditional medicine, decoration pieces and so on. Although international trade in tiger products has been banned since 1987 and domestic trade within China since 1993, tigers continue to be poached and Chinese entrepreneurs have established tiger farms in anticipation of their demise. While China desires to permit sale of tiger products from captive-bred tigers, this is opposed on the grounds that it likely encourages illegal killing. Instead, wildlife conservationists lobby for more spending on anti-poaching and trade-ban enforcement. In this study, a mathematical bioeconomic model is used to investigate the issue. Simulation results indicate that, unless range states are characterized by institutions (rule of law, low corruption) similar to those found in the richest countries, reliance on enforcement alone is insufficient to guarantee survival of wild tigers. Likewise, even though conservation payments could protect wild tigers, the inability to enforce contracts militates against this. Our model indicates that wild tigers can be protected by permitting sale of products from tiger farms, although this likely requires the granting of an exclusive license to sellers. Finally, it is possible to tradeoff enforcement effort and sale of products from captive-bred animals, but such tradeoffs are worsened by deteriorating tiger habitat.endangered species and extinction, wildlife farming, economics of natural, mathematical bioeconomics, Environmental Economics and Policy, Q27, C61, Q57,

Can Domestication of Wildlife Lead to Conservation? The Economics of Tiger Farming in China

Tigers are a threatened species that might soon disappear in the wild. Not only are tigers threatened by deteriorating and declining habitat, but poachers continue to kill tigers for traditional medicine, decoration pieces and so on. Although international trade in tiger products has been banned since 1987 and domestic trade within China since 1993, tigers continue to be poached and Chinese entrepreneurs have established tiger farms in anticipation of their demise. While China desires to permit sale of tiger products from captive-bred tigers, this is opposed on the grounds that it likely encourages illegal killing. Instead, wildlife conservationists lobby for more spending on anti-poaching and trade-ban enforcement. In this study, a mathematical bioeconomic model is used to investigate the issue. Simulation results indicate that, unless range states are characterized by institutions (rule of law, low corruption) similar to those found in the richest countries, reliance on enforcement alone is insufficient to guarantee survival of wild tigers. Likewise, even though conservation payments could protect wild tigers, the inability to enforce contracts militates against this. Our model indicates that wild tigers can be protected by permitting sale of products from tiger farms, although this likely requires the granting of an exclusive license to sellers. Finally, it is possible to tradeoff enforcement effort and sale of products from captive-bred animals, but such tradeoffs are worsened by deteriorating tiger habitat.endangered species, extinction, wildlife farming and bioeconomics

Structure of the doublet bands in doubly odd nuclei: The case of 128Cs^{128}Cs

The structure of the $\Delta J = 1$ doublet bands in $^{128}Cs$ is investigated within the framework of the Interacting Vector Boson Fermion Model (IVBFM). A new, purely collective interpretation of these bands is given on the basis of the used boson-fermion dynamical symmetry of the model. The energy levels of the doublet bands as well as the absolute $B(E2)$ and $B(M1)$ transition probabilities between the states of both yrast and yrare bands are described quite well. The observed odd-even staggering of both $B(M1)$ and $B(E2)$ values is reproduced by the introduction of an appropriate interaction term of quadrupole type, which produces such a staggering effect in the transition strengths. The calculations show that the appearance of doublet bands in certain odd-odd nuclei could be a consequence of the realization of a larger dynamical symmetry based on the non-compact supersymmetry group $OSp(2\Omega /12, R)$.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Target enrichment of ultraconserved elements from arthropods provides a genomic perspective on relationships among Hymenoptera

Gaining a genomic perspective on phylogeny requires the collection of data from many putatively independent loci collected across the genome. Among insects, an increasingly common approach to collecting this class of data involves transcriptome sequencing, because few insects have high-quality genome sequences available; assembling new genomes remains a limiting factor; the transcribed portion of the genome is a reasonable, reduced subset of the genome to target; and the data collected from transcribed portions of the genome are similar in composition to the types of data with which biologists have traditionally worked (e.g., exons). However, molecular techniques requiring RNA as a template are limited to using very high quality source materials, which are often unavailable from a large proportion of biologically important insect samples. Recent research suggests that DNA-based target enrichment of conserved genomic elements offers another path to collecting phylogenomic data across insect taxa, provided that conserved elements are present in and can be collected from insect genomes. Here, we identify a large set (n$=$1510) of ultraconserved elements (UCE) shared among the insect order Hymenoptera. We use in silico analyses to show that these loci accurately reconstruct relationships among genome-enabled Hymenoptera, and we design a set of baits for enriching these loci that researchers can use with DNA templates extracted from a variety of sources. We use our UCE bait set to enrich an average of 721 UCE loci from 30 hymenopteran taxa, and we use these UCE loci to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships spanning very old ($\geq$220 MYA) to very young ($\leq$1 MYA) divergences among hymenopteran lineages. In contrast to a recent study addressing hymenopteran phylogeny using transcriptome data, we found ants to be sister to all remaining aculeate lineages with complete support

An Economic Analysis of Mountain Pine Beetle Impacts in a Global Context

The economic effects of the mountain pine beetle outbreak in British Columbia are simulated using a multi-region spatial price equilibrium model coupled with a stochastic dynamic updating procedure. The simulation captures expected changes in the B.C. timber supply, growth of plantation forests in the southern hemisphere and an escalating Russian log export tax. The results indicate lumber and log prices will rise in B.C., offsetting some of the economic loss to timber producers. However, on net producers in the B.C. forest industry will experience a decrease in economic surplus.Mountain pine beetle; spatial price equilibirum; trade modeling

Occupational Status and Health Transitions

We use longitudinal data from the 1984 through 2007 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine how occupational status is related to the health transitions of 30 to 59 year-old U.S. males. A recent history of blue-collar employment predicts a substantial increase in the probability of transitioning from very good into bad self-assessed health, relative to white-collar employment, but with no evidence of occupational differences in movements from bad to very good health. These findings are robust to a series of sensitivity analyses. The results suggest that blue-collar workers "wear out" faster with age because they are more likely, than their white-collar counterparts, to experience negative health shocks. This partly reflects differences in the physical demands of blue-collar and white-collar jobs.occupations, physical demands, health

Levels in 99Zr observed in the decay of 99Y

New investigation of the decay scheme of 99Y to 99Zr removes minor discrepancies between decay and prompt-fission data.The existence of a strongly coupled band on the 725-keV level postulated in an earlier beta-decay work is not confirmed. Calculations in the IBFM framework allow an alternative interpretation of the even-parity levels above 500 keV

Fluorine Chemistry at Extreme Conditions: Possible Synthesis of Hgf4

By irradiating a pressurized mixture of a fluorine-bearing compound (XeF2XeF2) and HgF2HgF2 with synchrotron hard x-rays ... (See full text for complete abstract

A phylogeny of birds based on over 1,500 loci collected by target enrichment and high-throughput sequencing

Evolutionary relationships among birds in Neoaves, the clade comprising the vast majority of avian diversity, have vexed systematists due to the ancient, rapid radiation of numerous lineages. We applied a new phylogenomic approach to resolve relationships in Neoaves using target enrichment (sequence capture) and high-throughput sequencing of ultraconserved elements (UCEs) in avian genomes. We collected sequence data from UCE loci for 32 members of Neoaves and one outgroup (chicken) and analyzed data sets that differed in their amount of missing data. An alignment of 1,541 loci that allowed missing data was 87% complete and resulted in a highly resolved phylogeny with broad agreement between the Bayesian and maximum-likelihood (ML) trees. Although results from the 100% complete matrix of 416 UCE loci were similar, the Bayesian and ML trees differed to a greater extent in this analysis, suggesting that increasing from 416 to 1,541 loci led to increased stability and resolution of the tree. Novel results of our study include surprisingly close relationships between phenotypically divergent bird families, such as tropicbirds (Phaethontidae) and the sunbittern (Eurypygidae) as well as between bustards (Otididae) and turacos (Musophagidae). This phylogeny bolsters support for monophyletic waterbird and landbird clades and also strongly supports controversial results from previous studies, including the sister relationship between passerines and parrots and the non-monophyly of raptorial birds in the hawk and falcon families. Although significant challenges remain to fully resolving some of the deep relationships in Neoaves, especially among lineages outside the waterbirds and landbirds, this study suggests that increased data will yield an increasingly resolved avian phylogeny.Comment: 30 pages, 1 table, 4 figures, 1 supplementary table, 3 supplementary figure

Shape coexistence in the odd-odd neutron-rich nucleus 98Y studied in the interacting boson model

Data on levels in 98Y have been investigated and interpreted using recently published information on band structure in this region. Calculation in the IBM framework suggests that the 1182 keV isomer is spherical 10- state with π g9/2 ν h11/2 configuration. This assignment implies that the 8.0 microsecond bandhead at 496 keV is a 4- state with highly probable π(422)5/2 ν(541)3/2 configuration. The level structure of 98Y is well reproduced by coupling the levels of its both spherical and deformed odd-A neighbors and the origin of the isomeric states is understood