Sex allocation theory reveals a hidden cost of neonicotinoid exposure in a parasitoid wasp

P.R.W. was funded by the University of Stirling, C.V.B. and S.M.G. were funded by Nuffield Research Placements and N.C., J.G. and D.M.S. were funded by NERC (NE/J024481/1).Sex allocation theory has proved to be one the most successful theories in evolutionary ecology. However, its role in more applied aspects of ecology has been limited. Here we show how sex allocation theory helps uncover an otherwise hidden cost of neonicotinoid exposure in the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis. Female N. vitripennis allocate the sex of their offspring in line with Local Mate Competition (LMC) theory. Neonicotinoids are an economically important class of insecticides, but their deployment remains controversial, with evidence linking them to the decline of beneficial species. We demonstrate for the first time to our knowledge, that neonicotinoids disrupt the crucial reproductive behaviour of facultative sex allocation at sub-lethal, field-relevant doses in N. vitripennis. The quantitative predictions we can make from LMC theory show that females exposed to neonicotinoids are less able to allocate sex optimally and that this failure imposes a significant fitness cost. Our work highlights that understanding the ecological consequences of neonicotinoid deployment requires not just measures of mortality or even fecundity reduction among non-target species, but also measures that capture broader fitness costs, in this case offspring sex allocation. Our work also highlights new avenues for exploring how females obtain information when allocating sex under LMC.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Avant-Folk Experiments in Late Twentieth-Century American Feminist Moving Image and Literary Self-Representation

In the 1970s, influenced by a confluence of radical politics, social justice movements, and new intellectual paradigms including postmodernism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism, American women embraced personal and collective storytelling with vigor. Feminist historians including Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, Janet Theophano, Marianne Hirsch, and Amelie Hastie have since reframed once peripheral acts of self-inscription—from letter and diary writing to scrapbooking and recipe collecting—as central to the ongoing social and political objectives of the feminist movement, rethinking female authorship along the way. This dissertation builds on their important scholarship to focus specifically on the unique intersections of folk traditions with radical formal and political experimentation in feminist self-representational art made by queer and BIPOC women between the 1970s and the early 2000s. Representing a wide range of intersecting identities, the artists whose work I explore confront the limited and limiting patriarchal conventions of personal narrative and narrative “truth,” but they also challenge mainstream American feminism’s often exclusionary politics by exploring paradigms of sexuality, class, race, and ethnicity in addition to gender. Their interventions exemplify why and how personal storytelling became a privileged means of counter-discourse and rebellion for women across a diversity of subject positions and a range of media. The enactment of socially radical goals through formally radical techniques places the texts I examine squarely within a lineage of historical avant-garde movements. At the same time, feminist interventions led historians and artists alike to reconsider and reclaim traditional (and traditionally “feminine”) discursive practices and “folk” traditions like the cookbook, the family album, and the folktale. The seemingly incompatible or contradictory intersections of “folk” and avant-garde, tradition and experimentation, and the domestic and the radical are in fact highly generative, and they set the stage for further subversions of any clear distinctions between art and theory, self and other, memory and History, fiction and nonfiction, and public and private. Autobiographical, ethnographic, and archival representational practices have historically upheld white colonial and patriarchal regimes of knowledge and power. Rethinking and remaking the mechanics of representation to suit their own unique identities and subject positions, feminist artists and authors began to experiment with newly hybridized modes that subvert rigid generic boundaries and rules. This thesis examines the “auto-archival” work of filmmakers Michelle Citron, Margaret Stratton, and Nina Fonoroff, Chicana author Norma Cantú, and graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel, who reimagine and remake personal and family archives. Contextualized by the legacy of Zora Neale Hurston, the “fictional autoethnographic” strategies of filmmakers Cauleen Smith and Cheryl Dunye and authors Cantú and Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko are seen to invent auto/biographical stories and collapse collective histories into single, folklore-inflected life narratives. Finally, in “gastrography,” a representational mode exemplified by the writing of Alice B. Toklas and Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor and the new media experiments of Michelle Citron, explorations of individual and collective identity are enacted through recipes and food narratives. These works are explored as invitations to “cook up” each of the authors’ subjectivity and identity. In each case, the imaginative and literally creative acts of feminist “Avant-folk” storytelling restores the stories of marginalized women to public attention and historical discourse, rectifying gaps in the representation of the communities to which they belong on their own terms. My approach blends close readings of illustrative moving image and literary texts with scholarship from a variety of disciplines in order to investigate the ways in which different modes and media of expression are inextricably linked with self-construction, self-knowledge and self-presentation. This dissertation is indebted to Catherine Russell’s scholarship on experimental ethnography (1999) and archiveology (2018), as well as Leigh Gilmore’s feminist theories of women’s self-representation (1994). Finally, inspired by and taking my cue from the very artists whose work I explore, I have attempted, where possible, to create a text that is itself fluid, that resists imposing singular meanings, rigid generic boundaries, or monolithic definitions on texts that understand identity not as a stable entity but rather as multiple, even contradictory

In Conversation with Sophie Woodward and Ian Cook – Material Methods 4: Political Lego

This is the fourth episode of an NCRM “in conversation” series that focuses upon the emerging field of material methods. In this video, Sophie Woodward is in conversation with Ian Cook, who introduces political Lego as a method for critically engaging with consumption and follow-the-thing methods. Ian is a cultural geographer and situates political Lego within geography. He explores how political Lego is a material method, with an emphasis upon the potentials of creative practices and ‘play’ for engaging with politics. This video is of interest for anyone wanting to engage with material and creative methods

A mixed methods investigation of how young adults in Virginia received, evaluated, and responded to COVID-19 public health messaging

The purpose of this study was to investigate how young adults in Virginia received, evaluated, and responded to messages related to the coronavirus/COVID-19, a major disruptor of our time, and to understand how and when these messages influenced behavior. This was a sequential explanatory mixed methods study, including an online survey (quantitative) and virtual focus groups (qualitative). We surveyed a convenience sample of 3,694 Virginia residents by distributing a link to complete the survey online. Only data from18-24 year old adults (n=207) were included in the analysis for this study. Focus group participants were recruited from the survey participants as well as from a college-level introductory health class. Most (83%) young adult respondents reported national science and health organizations as a trusted source for COVID-19 information and over 50% of respondents reported getting information from state/local health departments (72%), healthcare professionals (71%), and online news sources (51%). Focus group participants emphasized social media as an additional major source of COVID-19 information. Focus group data revealed that young adults struggled with deciphering contradictory messaging, had a mix of logical and emotional reasons for deciding whether to adhere to guidelines, had a desire for consistent, fact-based public health messaging at the national level. The findings from this study underscore the importance of consistent, positive public health messaging in a public health crisis

Training Symbol-Based Equalization for Quadrature Duobinary PDM-FTN Systems

A training symbol-based equalization algorithm is proposed for polarization de-multiplexing in quadrature duobinary (QDB) modulated polarization division multiplexedfaster-than-Nyquist (FTN) coherent optical systems. The proposed algorithm is based on the least mean square algorithm, and multiple location candidates of a symbol are considered in order to make use of the training symbols with QDB modulation.Results show that an excellent convergence performance is obtained using the proposed algorithm under different polarization alignment scenarios. The optical signal-to-noise ratio required to attain a bit error rate of 2*10-2 is reduced by 1.7 and 1.8 dB using the proposed algorithm, compared to systems using the constant modulus algorithm with differential coding for 4-ary quadrature amplitude modulation(4-QAM) and 16-QAM systems with symbol-by-symbol detection, respectively.Furthermore, comparisons with the Tomlinson-Harashima precoding-based FTN systems illustrate that QDB is preferable when 4-QAM is utilized

Respiration of mesopelagic fish: a comparison of respiratory electron transport system (ETS) measurements and allometrically calculated rates in the Southern Ocean and Benguela Current

Mesopelagic fish are an important component of marine ecosystems, and their contribution to marine biogeochemical cycles is becoming increasingly recognized. However, major uncertainties remain in the rates at which they remineralize organic matter. We present respiration rate estimates of mesopelagic fish from two oceanographically contrasting regions: the Scotia Sea and the Benguela Current. Respiration rates were estimated by measuring the enzyme activities of the electron transport system. Regression analysis of respiration with wet mass highlights regional and inter-specific differences. The mean respiration rates of all mesopelagic fish sampled were 593.6 and 354.9 µl O2 individual−1 h−1 in the Scotia Sea and Benguela Current, respectively. Global allometric models performed poorly in colder regions compared with our observations, underestimating respiratory flux in the Scotia Sea by 67–88%. This may reflect that most data used to fit such models are derived from temperate and subtropical regions. We recommend caution when applying globally derived allometric models to regional data, particularly in cold (<5°C) temperature environments where empirical data are limited. More mesopelagic fish respiration rate measurements are required, particularly in polar regions, to increase the accuracy with which we can assess their importance in marine biogeochemical cycles

The Grizzly, March 26, 2015

More Efficient Wi-Fi Coming Soon • Organic Farm Preps for Spring Season With Purchase of New Bee Hives, Crops • Two Students Win Watson Fellowship • Myrin Renovations Aim to Meet Study Needs • Puttin\u27 on the Ritz • Airband Judging Changes • Museum Studies Minor Approved by Council • Opinion: The Sexist Nature of March Madness; Wellness Center Waits are Too Long • Softball Squad Starts Steady • Re-lax, Don\u27t Sweat Ithttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1928/thumbnail.jp