Peer and parent-child interaction before and after enrollment in nursery school

Forty-five three-year-olds and their parents participated in the research. Twenty-four of the children were observed two months and one week before, as well as two months after, enrollment in a nursery school. The others were observed at comparable intervals, but remained at home in the fulltime care of their parents. On all occasions, the children who were about to enter or had entered nursery school engaged in more positive interaction with and sought more proximity to their parents than the home care children did. These tendencies were unaffected by enrollment in nursery school. There were no differences between nursery school and home care children on measures of peer interaction eithe before or after nursery school began. The need to consider differences between nursery school and home care children that antedate enrollment is emphasized.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/23361/1/0000305.pd

Infant Social Interactions With Multiple Caregivers: The Importance of Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status

Abstract Most studies of diverse populations of families within the United States have either focused predominantly on ethnicity or socioeconomic status (SES), and those that have examined both ethnicity and SES have noted difficulties in disentangling the effects of SES and ethnicity. In order to achieve a greater understanding of variation in infant experiences with parental and nonparental caregivers in differing socioeconomic and ethnic contexts, 41 infants from African American and 40 infants from European American families of lower and middle SES were observed for 12 hours each in and around their home environments. Ethnic differences were evident in the infants' overall experiences with caregivers, maternal availability, affection, caregiving, and stimulation by nonnuclear relatives; SES differences were identified for maternal and paternal holding, maternal carrying, and paternal caregiving. When caregiver availability was taken into account, variations in interactional and care experiences were predominantly predicted by ethnicity. These results underscore the need to study both ethnicity and socioeconomic variation rather than either one alone. Furthermore, the caregiving behaviors of African American mothers and fathers may be misrepresented when multiple SES contexts are not considered. Keywords family/child rearing, infant/child cultural psychology, socioeconomic Ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) are frequently viewed as important factors affecting caregiving and other interactive experiences of infants and children (e.

Book Reviews

Book reviews of: William F. Winter and the New Mississippi: A Biography. By Charles C. Bolton Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Pp. vii, 368. Illustrations, map, acknowledgements, notes, index. $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781617037870. Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi’s Closed Society. By Joseph T. Reiff. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Acknowledgements, illustrations, map, notes, index. Pp. xxi, 384.$35 Hardcover. ISBN: 9780190246815). In Katrina’s Wake: The U.S. Coast Guard and the Gulf Coast Hurricanes of 2005. By Donald L. Canney. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010. Foreword, notes, index. Pp. xv, 228. $27.50 cloth.) Slavery, Race and Conquest in the Tropic: Lincoln, Douglas and the Future of America. By Robert E. May. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Acknowledgements, illustrations, maps, notes, index. Pp. xi, 296.$80 cloth, $26.99 paper,$22 e-book. ISBN: 9780521132527.) Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South. By Christopher D. Haveman. (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Illustrations, preface, acknowledgments, notes on terminology, index. Pp. ix, 414. Trouble in Goshen: Plain Folk, Roosevelt, Jesus, and Marx in the Great Depression. By Fred C. Smith (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014. Acknowledgements, illustrations, map notes, index. Pp. xi, 214. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781617039560.) Builders of a New South: Merchants, Capital, and the Remaking of Natchez, 1865-1914. By Aaron D. Anderson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Acknowledgments, illustrations, photographs, notes, graphics, index. Pp. 279.$40 cloth. ISBN: 978-1- 61703-667-5.) Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana- Florida Borderlands 1762-1803. By David Narrett. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Acknowledgements, illustrations, notes, index. Pp. xi, 365. $45 cloth,$44.99 e-book. ISBN: 978-1-4696-1833-3.) Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South. By Brian Craig Miller. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015. Illustrations, acknowledgments, appendix, notes, index. Pp. xvi, 257. $79.95 cloth,$29.95 paper. ISBN: 0820343327.) Signposts: New Directions in Southern Legal History. By Sally E. Hadden and Patricia Hagler Minter, eds. (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2013. Acknowledgements, illustrations, index. Pp. xi, 480. $69.95 cloth,$26.95 paper, $26.95 ebook. ISBN: 978-0-8203-4499-7.) The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. By Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Pp. 325.$32.50 Cloth. ISBN: 9780807835722.

Beyond Functional Diversity: The Importance of Trophic Position to Understanding Functional Processes in Community Evolution

Ecosystem structure—that is the species present, the functions they represent, and how those functions interact—is an important determinant of community stability. This in turn aects how ecosystems respond to natural and anthropogenic crises, and whether species or the ecological functions that they represent are able to persist. Here we use fossil data from museum collections, literature, and the Paleobiology Database to reconstruct trophic networks of Tethyan paleocommunities fromthe Anisian and Carnian (Triassic), Bathonian (Jurassic), and Aptian (Cretaceous) stages, and compare these to a previously reconstructed trophic network from a modern Jamaican reef community. We generated model food webs consistent with functional structure and taxon richnesses of communities, and compared distributions of guild level parameters among communities, to assess the eect of the Mesozoic Marine Revolution on ecosystem dynamics. We found that the trophic space of communities expanded from the Anisian to the Aptian, but this pattern was notmonotonic.We also found that trophic position for a given guild was subject to variation depending on what other guilds were present in that stage. The Bathonian showed the lowest degree of trophic omnivory by top consumers among all Mesozoic networks, and was dominated by longer food chains. In contrast, the Aptian network displayed a greater degree of short food chains and trophic omnivory that we attribute to the presence of large predatory guilds, such as sharks and bony fish. Interestingly, the modern Jamaican community appeared to have a higher proportion of long chains, as was the case in the Bathonian. Overall, results indicate that trophic structure is highly dependent on the taxa and ecological functions present, primary production experienced by the community, and activity of top consumers. Results from this study point to a need to better understand trophic position when planning restoration activities because a community may be so altered by human activity that restoring a species or its interactions may no longer be possible, and alternatives must be considered to restore an important function. Further work may also focus on elucidating the precise roles of top consumers in moderating network structure and community stability

Breeding young as a survival strategy during earth’s greatest mass extinction

Studies of the effects of mass extinctions on ancient ecosystems have focused on changes in taxic diversity, morphological disparity, abundance, behaviour and resource availability as key determinants of group survival. Crucially, the contribution of life history traits to survival during terrestrial mass extinctions has not been investigated, despite the critical role of such traits for population viability. We use bone microstructure and body size data to investigate the palaeoecological implications of changes in life history strategies in the therapsid forerunners of mammals before and after the Permo-Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME), the most catastrophic crisis in Phanerozoic history. Our results are consistent with truncated development, shortened life expectancies, elevated mortality rates and higher extinction risks amongst post-extinction species. Various simulations of ecological dynamics indicate that an earlier onset of reproduction leading to shortened generation times could explain the persistence of therapsids in the unpredictable, resource-limited Early Triassic environments, and help explain observed body size distributions of some disaster taxa (e.g., Lystrosaurus). Our study accounts for differential survival in mammal ancestors after the PTME and provides a methodological framework for quantifying survival strategies in other vertebrates during major biotic crises

Red Queen Coevolution on Fitness Landscapes

Species do not merely evolve, they also coevolve with other organisms. Coevolution is a major force driving interacting species to continuously evolve ex- ploring their fitness landscapes. Coevolution involves the coupling of species fit- ness landscapes, linking species genetic changes with their inter-specific ecological interactions. Here we first introduce the Red Queen hypothesis of evolution com- menting on some theoretical aspects and empirical evidences. As an introduction to the fitness landscape concept, we review key issues on evolution on simple and rugged fitness landscapes. Then we present key modeling examples of coevolution on different fitness landscapes at different scales, from RNA viruses to complex ecosystems and macroevolution.Comment: 40 pages, 12 figures. To appear in "Recent Advances in the Theory and Application of Fitness Landscapes" (H. Richter and A. Engelbrecht, eds.). Springer Series in Emergence, Complexity, and Computation, 201

Neurodevelopmental milestones and associated behaviours are similar among healthy children across diverse geographical locations.

It is unclear whether early child development is, like skeletal growth, similar across diverse regions with adequate health and nutrition. We prospectively assessed 1307 healthy, well-nourished 2-year-old children of educated mothers, enrolled in early pregnancy from urban areas without major socioeconomic or environmental constraints, in Brazil, India, Italy, Kenya and UK. We used a specially developed psychometric tool, WHO motor milestones and visual tests. Similarities across sites were measured using variance components analysis and standardised site differences (SSD). In 14 of the 16 domains, the percentage of total variance explained by between-site differences ranged from 1.3% (cognitive score) to 9.2% (behaviour score). Of the 80 SSD comparisons, only six were >±0.50 units of the pooled SD for the corresponding item. The sequence and timing of attainment of neurodevelopmental milestones and associated behaviours in early childhood are, therefore, likely innate and universal, as long as nutritional and health needs are met