Preserving Venison

This fact sheet provides information of preserving venison

Preserving Venison

This publication describes venison and how to properly select, can, freeze, and store it

The forgotten flies:The importance of non-syrphid Diptera as pollinators

Bees, hoverflies and butterflies are taxa frequently studied as pollinators in agricultural and conservation contexts. Although there are many records of non-syrphid Diptera visiting flowers, they are generally not regarded as important pollinators. We use data from 30 pollen-transport networks and 71 pollinator-visitation networks to compare the importance of various flower-visiting taxa as pollen-vectors. We specifically compare non-syrphid Diptera and Syrphidae to determine whether neglect of the former in the literature is justified. We found no significant difference in pollen-loads between the syrphid and non-syrphid Diptera. Moreover, there was no significant difference in the level of specialization between the two groups in the pollen-transport networks, though the Syrphidae had significantly greater visitation evenness. Flower visitation data from 33 farms showed that non-syrphid Diptera made up the majority of the flower-visiting Diptera in the agricultural studies (on average 82% abundance and 73% species richness), and we estimate that non-syrphid Diptera carry 84% of total pollen carried by farmland Diptera. As important pollinators, such as bees, have suffered serious declines, it would be prudent to improve our understanding of the role of non-syrphid Diptera as pollinators

Extending the Reach of PowerPay Debt Elimination: A New Mobile Application

PowerPay has proven effective as an online financial tool for personalized debt reduction since it was introduced in 1992. Results of the online program show positive outcomes for users such as reduced debt load and better spending habits. To increase the reach of this program, the free PowerPay mobile app was launched in 2014. This allows for immediate access to payment calendars, projected money saved, and building an emergency fund. The new app has been very well received, with over 2,400 downloads across 45 countries, and adds another debt management instrument for Extension personnel to share with their clientele

The impact of the invasive alien plant, impatiens glandulifera, on pollen transfer networks

Biological invasions are a threat to the maintenance of ecological processes, including pollination. Plant-flower visitor networks are traditionally used as a surrogated for pollination at the community level, despite they do not represent the pollination process, which takes place at the stigma of plants where pollen grains are deposited. Here we investigated whether the invasion of the alien plant Impatiens glandulifera (Balsaminaceae) affects pollen transfer at the community level. We asked whether more alien pollen is deposited on the stigmas of plants on invaded sites, whether deposition is affected by stigma type (dry, semidry and wet) and whether the invasion of I. glandulifera changes the structure of the resulting pollen transfer networks. We sampled stigmas of plants on 10 sites invaded by I. glandulifera (hereafter, balsam) and 10 non-invaded control sites. All 20 networks had interactions with balsam pollen, although significantly more balsam pollen was found on plants with dry stigmas in invaded areas. Balsam pollen deposition was restricted to a small subset of plant species, which is surprising because pollinators are known to carry high loads of balsam pollen. Balsam invasion did not affect the loading of native pollen, nor did it affect pollen transfer network properties; networks were modular and poorly nested, both of which are likely to be related to the specificity of pollen transfer interactions. Our results indicate that pollination networks become more specialized when moving from the flower visitation to the level of pollen transfer networks. Therefore, caution is needed when inferring pollination from patterns of insect visitation or insect pollen loads as the relationship between these and pollen deposition is not straightforward. © 2015 Emer et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

The case for single cells and alternative ways of viewing custodial accommodation for Australian Aboriginal peoples

Until recently there was an assumption that Australian Aboriginal prisoners should be accommodated in dual occupancy or dormitory accommodation while in custody to best meet cultural needs, primarily to prevent social isolation. This historical assumption is reflected in the national guidelines for prison accommodation, various coronial and royal commission recommendations for both police and prison accommodation and evolved from the problem solving approaches to the custodial arrangements of Australian Aboriginal peoples instituted by custodial agencies and stakeholder consultations with Aboriginal groups. This paper presents the findings from the first empirical study of the needs and preferences of Australian Aboriginal prisoners in custody suggesting that certain types of shared and dormitory accommodation present a myriad of complex implications for Aboriginal prisoners. It suggests shared or dormitory accommodation may not be the most favourable or preferred model for accommodating Aboriginal prisoners and may be a simulacrum in meeting the needs of Aboriginal prisoners for living as a social group. The paper presents new understandings and a number of socio-cultural options for viewing custodial accommodation which have significance to prisoner outcomes at various end-points in the criminal justice system.Elizabeth Grant and Paul Memmot

Interaction generalisation and demographic feedbacks drive the resilience of plant–insect networks to extinctions

Understanding the processes driving ecological resilience, that is the extent to which systems retain their structure while absorbing perturbations, is a central challenge for theoretical and applied ecologists. Plant–insect assemblages are well-suited for the study of ecological resilience as they are species-rich and encompass a variety of ecological interactions that correspond to essential ecosystem functions. Mechanisms affecting community response to perturbations depend on both the natural history and structure of ecological interactions. Natural history attributes of the interspecific interactions, for example whether they are mutualistic or antagonistic, may affect the ecological resilience by controlling the demographic feedbacks driving ecological dynamics at the community level. Interaction generalisation may also affect resilience, by defining opportunities for interaction rewiring, the extent to which species are able to switch interactions in fluctuating environments. These natural history attributes may also interact with network structure to affect ecological resilience. Using adaptive network models, we investigated the resilience of plant–pollinator and plant–herbivore networks to species loss. We specifically investigated how fundamental natural history differences between these systems, namely the demographic consequences of the interaction and their level of generalisation—mediating rewiring opportunities—affect the resilience of dynamic ecological networks to extinctions. We also create a general benchmark for the effect of network structure on resilience simulating extinctions on theoretical networks with controlled structures. When network structure was static, pollination networks were less resilient than herbivory networks; this is related to their high levels of nestedness and the reciprocally positive feedbacks that define mutualisms, which made co-extinction cascades more likely and longer in plant–pollinator assemblages. When considering interaction rewiring, the high generalisation and the structure of pollination networks boosted their resilience to extinctions, which approached those of herbivory networks. Simulation results using theoretical networks suggested that the empirical structure of herbivory networks may protect them from collapse. Elucidating the ecological and evolutionary processes driving interaction rewiring is key to understanding the resilience of plant–insect assemblages. Accounting for rewiring requires ecologists to combine natural history with network models that incorporate feedbacks between species abundances, traits and interactions. This combination will elucidate how perturbations propagate at community level, reshaping biodiversity structure and ecosystem functions

Design concepts and processes for public Aboriginal architecture

The authors wrote this paper in an attempt to document and describe how to address the design challenge of a public building which captures and distils Indigenous cultural assumptions, perspectives, connections, and cultural content. Although there is a body of knowledge about Aboriginal vernacular design and meaning, and about related architectural design issues, there is not a good sense of how relevant this collective wisdom is in the context of a public or monumental building. There are also many pitfalls in prescribing something in a domain which is largely uncharted - or indeed of prescribing anything to architects, or on behalf of Aboriginal communities. Questions that are addressed in this paper include:- What might an interested architect want to know about Aboriginal cultures? What are some possible thematic elements and complexes that might lend themselves to architectural form, function and meaning? What are some good and bad examples of previous attempts to design and incorporate Indigenous culture into public buildings? What Aboriginal design issues are most relevant to the design of public architecture