What is the Public of Public History? Between the Public Sphere and Public Agency

Public history constitutes a historical field, it includes several related journals, membership organisations, research centres, undergraduate and graduate programs all over the world. Most importantly, Public History has been marked by growing historiography and an increasing public interest in history. However, there is a lack of research on the most important constituent element of Public History, the ‘public’. The aim of this paper is to shed light on how Public History has approached the public in the last four decades. By focusing on the two different forms the public has taken, the public sphere and the public agency, the paper examines the notion of the public as it appeared in the historiography and how it determined the epistemology and methodology of Public History

Data from: Genomics meets applied ecology: Characterizing habitat quality for sloths in a tropical agroecosystem

Understanding how habitat quality in heterogeneous landscapes governs the distribution and fitness of individuals is a fundamental aspect of ecology. While mean individual fitness is generally considered a key to assessing habitat quality, a comprehensive understanding of habitat quality in heterogeneous landscapes requires estimates of dispersal rates among habitat types. The increasing accessibility of genomic approaches, combined with field-based demographic methods, provides novel opportunities for incorporating dispersal estimation into assessments of habitat quality. In this study, we integrated genomic kinship approaches with field-based estimates of fitness components and Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) procedures to estimate habitat-specific dispersal rates and characterize habitat quality in two-toed sloths (Choloepus hoffmanni) occurring in a Costa Rican agricultural ecosystem. Field-based observations indicated that birth and survival rates were similar in a sparsely-shaded cacao farm and adjacent cattle pasture-forest mosaic. Sloth density was threefold higher in pasture compared to cacao, whereas home range size and overlap were greater in cacao compared to pasture. Dispersal rates were similar between the two habitats, as estimated using ABC procedures applied to the spatial distribution of pairs of related individuals identified using 3,431 SNP and 11 microsatellite locus genotypes. Our results indicate that crops produced under a sparse overstory can, in some cases, constitute lower quality habitat than pasture-forest mosaics for sloths, perhaps because of differences in food resources or predator communities. Finally, our study demonstrates that integrating field-based demographic approaches with genomic methods can provide a powerful means for characterizing habitat quality for animal populations occurring in heterogeneous landscapes. The data package contains three datasets: - SNP genotypes for individuals used in the ABC model. File is formatted for the program code used. - The microsatellite genotypes for individuals used in the ABC model. - The ecological data used in the ABC model including year captured, life stage, sex and habitat patch the individual was captured in. Time represents the years for the study period with the first year (2010) represented by a zero. Life stage is determined at the time the individual was tracked either 1 for subadult or 2 for adult. Patch represents either cacao (0) or pasture-forest mosaic (1) habitat

Applied Geomatics, ISSN: 1866-9298 (print version) ISSN: 1866-928X (electronic version)

Scientific and technical advances in the geomatic sciences AG covers many research fields, including: remote sensing, close range and videometric photogrammetry, image analysis, digital mapping, land and geographic information systems, geographic information science, integrated geodesy, spatial data analysis, heritage recording; network adjustment and numerical processes. It also features articles from all areas of deformation measurements and analysis, structural engineering, mechanical engineering and all trends in earth and planetary survey science and space technology. In addition, the journal contains notices of conferences and international workshops, industry news, and information on new products

The biogeography of community assembly: latitude and predation drive variation in community trait distribution in a guild of epifaunal crustaceans

AbstractWhile considerable evidence exists of biogeographic patterns in the intensity of species interactions, the influence of these patterns on variation in community structure is less clear. Using a model selection approach on measures of trait dispersion in crustaceans associated with eelgrass (Zostera marina) spanning 30º of latitude in two oceans, we found that dispersion strongly increased with increasing predation and decreasing latitude. Ocean and epiphyte load appeared as secondary predictors; Pacific communities were more overdispersed while Atlantic communities were more clustered, and increasing epiphytes were associated with increased clustering. By examining how species interactions and environmental filters influence community structure across biogeographic regions, we demonstrate how both latitudinal variation in species interactions and historical contingency shape these responses. Community trait distributions have implications for ecosystem stability and functioning, and integrating large-scale observations of environmental filters, species interactions, and traits can help us predict how communities may respond to environmental change