Variety in evolutionary strategies favours biodiversity in habitats of moderate productivity

The mechanism whereby biodiversity varies between habitats differing in productivity is a missing link between ecological and evolutionary theory with vital implications for biodiversity conservation, management and the assessment of ecosystem services. A unimodal, humped-back relationship, with biodiversity greatest at intermediate productivities, is evident when plant, animal and microbial communities are compared across productivities in nature. However, the mechanistic, evolutionary basis of this observation remains enigmatic. We show, for natural and semi-natural plant communities across a range of bioclimatic zones, that biodiversity is greatest where communities include species with widely divergent values for phenotypic traits involved in resource economics and reproductive timing, coinciding with intermediate biomass production, whilst each productivity extreme is associated with small numbers of specialised species with similar trait values. Our data demonstrate that evolution can generate a greater range of phenotypes where large, fast-growing species are prevented from attaining dominance and extreme adaptation to a harsh abiotic environment is not a prerequisite for survival

Advice from the Webmaster: Be Paranoid

In the 17+ years I’ve been webmaster at Linfield College, I have learned the internet can hurt you anonymously, quickly and painfully. There isn’t enough space in this magazine to cover the topic in detail. But if I had to give an elevator pitch about what you should worry about and what you should do based on my experiences and what Linfield’s Information Technology support desk deals with, it would be this

Music and Islamic Reform

Music in the Islamic world is being used as a tool for change. Islam is going though a period of major reform, and music is a way to get people all over the world to listen. Though music is prohibited among conservative groups, the Sufis and Islamic youth are spreading ideas of nonviolence and love both to audiences within the religion and to outsiders. The introduction of music has been met with heavy resistance by orthodox members of the religious community, but it has also brought change and success

Constructing Memory: The Vimy Memorial

The 75th anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge is also the 56th anniversary of the dedication of the Vimy Memorial. In the summer of 1936 over 100,000 people witnessed a ceremony which captured the imagination of the world and crystalized the Canadian memory of Vimy ridge. The historical reality of the battle was re-worked and reinterpreted in a conscious attempt to give purpose and meaning to an event which was to symbolize Canada’s coming-of-age as a nation

Seeing through Sound

Linfield College webmaster Jonathan Pierce explains the opportunity he had to learn what Linfield\u27s website looks like to someone who can\u27t see

Using Experiential Client-Based Projects in Sport Sales Courses

Sales has gradually gained traction in the sport management programs over the past 15 years. This article examines the extent to which client-based experiential projects are used in sport sales courses and determines if teaching practices are different in client-based and non-client-based courses. Online survey responses were received from 36 of 85 sport management programs that offer a sport sales course. Results indicated that 58.3% of sport sales courses utilized a client-based experiential sales project. The sports properties that partner with sales classes the most are college athletics, minor league teams, and Big Five professional sports teams. Clients provided students with leads in 55% of the projects. The most popular organizational model was the independent model, which was employed by 70% of the courses engaging in a client-based project, followed by the on-campus and in-venues models. Client-based courses were more likely to use mock sales calls, guest speakers, and the Sales Huddle game. Implications for teaching client-based experiential courses are addressed

Demographic, Work Environment and Resilience Characteristics among Registered Nurses

In a caring profession like nursing, the risk of sending newly-graduated nurses with low resilience into the workplace provided impetus for the study to explore the association between demographic, work environment and resilience characteristics among registered nurses employed in acute care setting. Select subscales from the PES-NWI were used to assess Nurse Manager Ability, Leadership and Support of Nurses; Staffing and Resource Adequacy; and Collegial Nurse-Physician Relations (Lake, 2002) and the Resilience Scale was used to measure resilience (Wagnild & Young, 1993). Intent to stay was measured by McCain’s Behavioral Commitment Scale (McCloskey, 1990). One-hundred and thirteen (113) registered nurses completed and returned the survey, giving a response rate of 50.2%. Using SPSS 24 (IBM Corp., 2013) software, descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data. The p-value for all comparisons was set at p≤0.05. Five (5) out of the twenty-one (21) correlations were statistically significant and were greater than or equal to .33. Resilience scores and Behavioral Commitment scores, or intent-to-stay, had a correlation of only .069. Adequate Staffing was also correlated to positive Nurse-physician relationships and to strong Nurse Management. These factors are clearly related to creating a stable workforce among nurses. The results showed that no factor had strong correlation with the highest level of nursing education received, suggesting that, at this hospital, registered nurses prepared by a four-year degree had no higher or lower resilience and were no more or less likely to stay at their place of work than those who were prepared at the associate degree level. Findings from this study have the potential to mitigate practice work environment stressors and decrease turnover among registered nurses employed in acute care settings