How the West Was Won:

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruitspapers/1094/thumbnail.jp

A Macarian-Wesleyan Theology of Mission

In this paper, Iwill begin by providing an outline of the development of the theology of union with God, or theoric. I will have a particular focus on fourth-century Syrian monk Macarius-Symeon, whose Fifty Spiritual Homilies had an influence on early Pietism and early Methodism From there, I will seek to demonstrate how John and Charles Wesley, as well as their colleagues such as John Fletcher in the first generation of Methodist leadership, sought to critically fold this understanding into their own teaching regarding justification, sanctification and the ultimate goal of those who walk in union with God in Christ. Finally, this is integrated into a theology of mission in which this union with God is meant to be lived out individually and in community in a manner in which the missio Dei is extended in witness to the entire world

Molecular and fossil evidence place the origin of cichlid fishes long after Gondwanan rifting.

Cichlid fishes are a key model system in the study of adaptive radiation, speciation and evolutionary developmental biology. More than 1600 cichlid species inhabit freshwater and marginal marine environments across several southern landmasses. This distributional pattern, combined with parallels between cichlid phylogeny and sequences of Mesozoic continental rifting, has led to the widely accepted hypothesis that cichlids are an ancient group whose major biogeographic patterns arose from Gondwanan vicariance. Although the Early Cretaceous (ca 135 Ma) divergence of living cichlids demanded by the vicariance model now represents a key calibration for teleost molecular clocks, this putative split pre-dates the oldest cichlid fossils by nearly 90 Myr. Here, we provide independent palaeontological and relaxed-molecular-clock estimates for the time of cichlid origin that collectively reject the antiquity of the group required by the Gondwanan vicariance scenario. The distribution of cichlid fossil horizons, the age of stratigraphically consistent outgroup lineages to cichlids and relaxed-clock analysis of a DNA sequence dataset consisting of 10 nuclear genes all deliver overlapping estimates for crown cichlid origin centred on the Palaeocene (ca 65-57 Ma), substantially post-dating the tectonic fragmentation of Gondwana. Our results provide a revised macroevolutionary time scale for cichlids, imply a role for dispersal in generating the observed geographical distribution of this important model clade and add to a growing debate that questions the dominance of the vicariance paradigm of historical biogeography

Bias in phylogenetic measurements of extinction and a case study of end‐Permian tetrapods

Extinction risk in the modern world and extinction in the geological past are often linked to aspects of life history or other facets of biology that are phylogenetically conserved within clades. These links can result in phylogenetic clustering of extinction, a measurement comparable across different clades and time periods that can be made in the absence of detailed trait data. This phylogenetic approach is particularly suitable for vertebrate taxa, which often have fragmentary fossil records, but robust, cladistically‐inferred trees. Here we use simulations to investigate the adequacy of measures of phylogenetic clustering of extinction when applied to phylogenies of fossil taxa while assuming a Brownian motion model of trait evolution. We characterize expected biases under a variety of evolutionary and analytical scenarios. Recovery of accurate estimates of extinction clustering depends heavily on the sampling rate, and results can be highly variable across topologies. Clustering is often underestimated at low sampling rates, whereas at high sampling rates it is always overestimated. Sampling rate dictates which cladogram timescaling method will produce the most accurate results, as well as how much of a bias ancestor–descendant pairs introduce. We illustrate this approach by applying two phylogenetic metrics of extinction clustering (Fritz and Purvis’s D and Moran’s I) to three tetrapod clades across an interval including the Permo‐Triassic mass extinction event. These groups consistently show phylogenetic clustering of extinction, unrelated to change in other quantitative metrics such as taxonomic diversity or extinction intensity.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136284/1/pala12274.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136284/2/pala12274_am.pd

Bajaichthys elegans from the Eocene of Bolca (Italy) and the overlooked morphological diversity of Zeiformes (Teleostei, Acanthomorpha)

The Eocene (Ypresian) fauna of Bolca, Italy yields a famous assemblage of marine tropical teleosts. One of the most anatomically distinctive teleosts from Bolca is the enigmatic †Bajaichthys elegans, generally interpreted as a member of Lampridiformes (oarfishes and their allies). Re‐examination of the type and only specimen of †Bajaichthys contradicts this attribution, and we propose that its original description as a member of Zeiformes (dories) was in fact correct. †Bajaichthys bears numerous derived features of zeiforms not found in lampridiforms, including: a pelvic spine, a first vertebra closely associated with the neurocranium, and a reduced metapterygoid not contacting the quadrate. Lampridiform‐like attributes, including a greatly elongated ascending process of the premaxilla, are known to be convergent between this group and Zeiformes. Using a combination of morphological and molecular data, we confirm this revised interpretation and resolve the position of †Bajaichthys within zeiform phylogeny. In terms of overall shape, the very elongate †Bajaichthys contrasts with deep‐bodied Zeiformes and probably had distinctive ecological habits. Our inferred placement of †Bajaichthys and other fossil taxa with extended caudal peduncles (e.g. †Archaeozeus) suggests that the elongate morphotype is ancestral for Zeiformes as a whole, and that the deep‐bodied geometry typical of extant taxa probably appeared several times independently. However, these inferences must be considered preliminary due to low support for patterns of relationships within Zeiformes. The systematic reattribution of †Bajaichthys expands the taxonomic diversity of the Bolca fauna as well as the morphological and ecological diversity of the zeiform clade.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136341/1/pala12280_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136341/2/pala12280.pd

Scale anomalies imply violation of the averaged null energy condition

Considerable interest has recently been expressed regarding the issue of whether or not quantum field theory on a fixed but curved background spacetime satisfies the averaged null energy condition (ANEC). A comment by Wald and Yurtsever [Phys. Rev. D43, 403 (1991)] indicates that in general the answer is no. In this note I explore this issue in more detail, and succeed in characterizing a broad class of spacetimes in which the ANEC is guaranteed to be violated. Finally, I add some comments regarding ANEC violation in Schwarzschild spacetime.Comment: 6 pages; ReV_TeX 3.0

Debate: What Would be the Best Way to Use 10 Million Dollars in the Counter-Trafficking Sector?

For me, it is essential that the first question related to this query be: ‘What are we really hoping to achieve with our available resources?’ In the past, this question would have been answered in terms of the deployment of the traditional ‘3 Ps’: prevention interventions, prosecution efforts and protection initiatives. Programme efforts under these headings are often designed to prevent people from being trafficked, put criminals in jail and help victims after they leave the exploitative environment. But few interventions explicitly state ‘the goal is to reduce the number of people in human trafficking/slavery-like conditions’. The goal must be the reduction of overall victims.The second question I would ask: ‘What can be done to achieve the most impact in reducing the number of trafficked persons, with the least amount of resources?’ In other words, I would seek to put in place a programme that is both cost effective and impactful. With limited funding available globally, every dollar must count

Morphology and phylogenetic relationships of fossil snake mackerels and cutlassfishes (Trichiuroidea) from the Eocene (Ypresian) London Clay Formation

‘Gempylids’ (snake mackerels) and trichiurids (cutlassfishes) are pelagic fishes characterized by slender to eel‐like bodies, deep‐sea predatory ecologies, and large fang‐like teeth. Several hypotheses of relationships between these groups have been proposed, but a consensus remains elusive. Fossils attributed to ‘gempylids’ and trichiurids consist almost exclusively of highly compressed body fossils and isolated teeth and otoliths. We use micro‐computed tomography to redescribe two three‐dimensional crania, historically assigned to †Eutrichiurides winkleri and †Progempylus edwardsi, as well as an isolated braincase (NHMUK PV OR 41318). All from the London Clay Formation (Eocene, Ypresian), these specimens represent some of the oldest fossils identified as trichiuroids. We find that †Eutrichiurides winkleri does not show diagnostic characters of †Eutrichiurides, and it is assigned to a new genus. To investigate the placement of these fossils relative to extant lineages, we combine existing morphological character sets for ‘gempylids’ and trichiurids along with published mitogenomic data. Our analyses recover a monophyletic Trichiuridae nested within a paraphyletic ‘Gempylidae’. The taxon formerly known as †Eutrichiurides winkleri is considered Trichiuroidea incertae sedis, while †Progempylus edwardsi and NHMUK PV OR 41318 are recovered within the ‘gempylid’ grade. Using previously published descriptions and character optimizations from our phylogenetic analyses we suggest possible placements for laterally compressed body fossils assigned to Trichiuroidea (†Argestichthys, †Abadzekhia, †Chelifichthys, †Anenchelum, †Eutrichiurides, †Musculopedunculus).Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146609/1/spp21221.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146609/2/spp21221_am.pd

Phylogenetic informativeness reconciles ray-finned fish molecular divergence times

BACKGROUND: Discordance among individual molecular age estimates, or between molecular age estimates and the fossil record, is observed in many clades across the Tree of Life. This discordance is attributed to a variety of variables including calibration age uncertainty, calibration placement, nucleotide substitution rate heterogeneity, or the specified molecular clock model. However, the impact of changes in phylogenetic informativeness of individual genes over time on phylogenetic inferences is rarely analyzed. Using nuclear and mitochondrial sequence data for ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) as an example, we extend the utility of phylogenetic informativeness profiles to predict the time intervals when nucleotide substitution saturation results in discordance among molecular ages estimated. RESULTS: We demonstrate that even with identical calibration regimes and molecular clock methods, mitochondrial based molecular age estimates are systematically older than those estimated from nuclear sequences. This discordance is most severe for highly nested nodes corresponding to more recent (i.e., Jurassic-Recent) divergences. By removing data deemed saturated, we reconcile the competing age estimates and highlight that the older mtDNA based ages were driven by nucleotide saturation. CONCLUSIONS: Homoplasious site patterns in a DNA sequence alignment can systematically bias molecular divergence time estimates. Our study demonstrates that PI profiles can provide a non-arbitrary criterion for data exclusion to mitigate the influence of homoplasy on time calibrated branch length estimates. Analyses of actinopterygian molecular clocks demonstrate that scrutiny of the time scale on which sequence data is informative is a fundamental, but generally overlooked, step in molecular divergence time estimation