A study of the relationship between the starling Sturnus vulgaris and the haematophagus mite Ornithonyssus bursa : a thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Zoology at Massey University

A description is given of a study of starlings breeding in 160 nest boxes over the two breeding seasons 1974-75 and 1975-76, aimed at determining productivity and some factors which possibly affect it. Changes in productivity through the season and between seasons are discussed, with particular reference to the influence of the mite Ornithonyssus bursa on nestling growth rate, weight at 15 days, mortality, blood characteristics, and lipid stores. Also the effect of mite infestations on the mean weight of nestlings from different brood sizes is discussed. The starling nestling period is described, including changes in feeding activity, growth rates, sanitation measures and behaviour patterns. Factors possibly contributing to the death of late hatching nestlings are discussed. The life cycle of 0. bursa is outlined with particular emphasis on feeding methods and their effects on the host. The behaviour of mites in response to some environmental variables is discussed briefly in relation to the effects of mites on nestlings. The seasonal pattern of 0. bursa infestation over the starling breeding season is described with particular emphasis on the proportion of nest sites infested and the degree of infestation at each of three periods in the breeding season. Several methods of mite dispersal are considered and their importance in infesting other nest sites are discussed

Engineering glycan-binding proteins for the detection, analysis and treatment of cancer cells

Aberrant glycosylation in cancer cells can often lead to an increase in the exposure of unusual glycan structures. The presence of these structures can be exploited by engineering glycan-binding proteins as novel tools for the characterisation of glycoproteins bearing cancer-associated glycan structures. The carbohydraterecognition domain (CRD) of a rat serum mannose-binding protein (MBP) has been modified to mimic the glycan-specificity of a galactose-binding C-type lectin. Galactosebinding MBP (GalMBP) binds selectively to cancer-associated glycan structures on an array of glycans, including Lewis-type structures and T antigen. GalMBP binding to breast cancer cell lines has been demonstrated and GalMBP ligands on these cell lines have been purified on affinity columns of immobilised GalMBP. Analysis and purification of GalMBP ligands from MCF7 cell membranes led to the identification of a restricted population of high molecular weight glycoproteins. Proteomic and glycomic analysis of these glycoproteins by mass spectrometry showed that they are forms of CD98hc that bear glycans displaying heavily fucosylated termini, including Lewisx and Lewisy structures. Glycoproteomic analysis of a panel of commonly studied breast cancer cell lines reveals wide variations in the levels of Lewisx and the T antigen as well as the proteins that they are carried on. Proteins identified in multiple cell lines by GalMBP, including the mucin MUC-1 bearing T antigen and CD98hc, may represent common cancer-cell surface targets for GalMBP. The use of GalMBP as a proteomic tool for characterisation of glycoproteins bearing Lewisx has also been demonstrated on a panel of Hodgkin’s Reed-Sternberg cell lines. Identification of common protein carriers of Lewisx among different cell lines including CD98hc and ICAM-1 provides information about the likely role of these structures in the pathology of Hodgkin's Lymphomas and supports the previous finding that CD98hc is a novel protein carrier of Lewisx structures

Bird fauna of Niue Island in 1994-95

Abstract An annotated checklist of the bird species of Niue Island in the southwest Pacific is provided from published and unpublished sources, and from observations during April-May, September, and December 1994. Results for common species were derived from five-minute counts, numbers seen per kilometre while travelling by motorcycle along roads, and single species surveys. The number of species on Niue is 31 (6 seabirds, 10 shorebirds, and 15 land birds). The common noddy (Anous stolidus) was confinned as nesting on the island. Recommendations are made for the future management of the hunted Pacific pigeon (Ducula pacifica) and the scarce blue-crowned lory ( h i australis). Powlesland, R.G.; Hay, J.R.; Powlesland, M.H. Bird fauna of Niue Island in 1994-95. Notornis 47(1): 39-53

Continuity or colonization in Anglo-Saxon England? Isotope evidence for mobility, subsistence practice, and status at West Heslerton

The adventus Saxonum is a crucial event in English protohistory. Scholars from a range of disciplines dispute the scale and demographic profile of the purported colonizing population. The 5th-7th century burial ground at West Heslerton, North Yorkshire, is one of the few Anglian cemeteries where an associated settlement site has been identified and subjected to extensive multidisciplinary postexcavation study. Skeletal and grave good evidence has been used to indicate the presence of Scandinavian settlers. A small, preliminary study using lead and strontium isotope analysis of tooth enamel, mineralized in early childhood, from Neolithic/Early Bronze Age (n = 8), Iron Age (n = 2), and Early Anglo-Saxon (n = 32) skeletons, was carried out to directly investigate this hypothesis. Results suggest that lead provides dissimilar types of information in different time periods. In post-Roman England, it appears to reflect the level of exposure to circulated anthropogenic rather than natural geological lead, thus being a cultural rather than geographical marker. Consequently, only strontium provides mobility evidence among the Anglian population, whereas both isotope systems do so in pre-Roman periods. Strontium data imply the presence of two groups: one of local and one of nonlocal origin, but more work is required to define the limits of local variation and identify immigrants with confidence. Correlations with traditional archaeological evidence are inconclusive. While the majority of juveniles and prehistoric individuals fall within the local group, both groups contain juveniles, and adults of both sexes. There is thus no clear support for the exclusively male, military-elite invasion model at this site

First-Person Participation in Dante's 'Commedia'

This thesis sets out a case for a mode of reading I term first-person participation in relation to Dante’s 'Commedia', a narrative poem I propose to function as an exceptionally participatory text. That Dante’s poem invites active engagement on the part of its readers is widely accepted in scholarship. My objective is to extend this debate by identifying certain of Dante’s innovations in relation to the mechanisms of narrative transmission through which such active engagement is invited. In so doing, I seek to establish that these mechanisms together constitute a narratological strategy of invitations to the reader to engage with the poem, intermittently and electively, in a mode of first-person participation, mentally simulating on her own account the journey to the desire for the divine. My research transfers and adapts for textual literary theory new notions of embodied simulation from cognitive neuroscience and emerging ideas in videogame critical theory relating to the mechanics of player presence and the function of the avatar, suggesting and evidencing parallels with the deeply personal and embodied modes of interaction with devotional texts associated with medieval practices of affective piety. I identify in the 'Commedia' a comprehensive and systematic programme of invitations to participate facilitating three types of presence in the responsive reader, and underpinning the invitation to first-person participation. Spatial presence (the perceptual illusion of ‘being there’) is invited through a multi-layered strategy I describe as narration through situated body states. Social presence (the illusion of being physically in relation with others) is invited by narration through kinaesthetic empathy. Self-presence (the experience that ‘something is happening to me’) is constituted, I suggest, through a combination of five mechanisms: a model of narrating instances that identifies the existence of four “faces” of the Dantean ‘io’; a strategy I borrow from film theory of narration through mobile camera view; a new reading of the functioning of the direct addresses to the reader; a strategy of narrative training; and a comprehensive strategy of narration through the manifold gaps in the text.Keith Sykes Studentship in Medieval Italian Literatur

A time-budget study of the South Island robin Petroica australis australis at Kowhai Bush, Kaikoura

I timed the activities of individually colour-banded South Island Robins Petroica australis australis of known age at Kowhai Bush, Kaikoura (August 1976 to December 1978) and on Outer Chetwode Island, Pelorus Sound (April to June 1978) to establish and investigate their time-budgets and diurnal patterns of behaviours. The number of Robins present in the Kowhai Bush study area gradually declined from a peak of about 100 in January 1977 to 37 in July 1978. Probably, about 120 Robins were present on Outer Chetwode Island during my visits there (Flack and Lloyd 1978). The birds seemed to be active only during the day, and no data on sleeping and roosting were collected. Generally, each behaviour included several activities: for example, body-maintenance behaviour was made up of stretching, beak-wiping, body-shaking, scratching, preening, bathing, anting and sunning. Many activities were timed separately and descriptions of them are given. To determine the proportion of time Robins devoted to a behaviour, the time they spent in the various activities making up the behaviour were combined. Throughout the year Robins foraged for more than half the daylight hours. It was evident that foraging to find enough food to meet their maintenance requirements was their first priority. Once this need had been met, extra time was devoted to body-maintenance and resting. The behaviours of lowest priority were those associated with reproduction. In the non-breeding season (January to July inclusive), adult males and adult females foraged least of all just before starting to moult (December and January), spending about 55% of observation time on feeding. Over the year they foraged most in July, 90-94% of their time. The shortest day and lowest monthly mean temperature occurred in June, but both factors increased little to July. Since the Robins devoted more time to foraging during the course of autumn (April and May) and winter (June and July), they spent gradually less time in resting and body-maintenance. Adults spent the least time in partner-interactions, territorial defence and vocalizing when moulting (January to March). These behaviours increased as a proportion of their time-budgets thereafter. From January to June, both immature males and immature females foraged more and spent less time on body-maintenance and resting than did adult males and adult females respectively. Furthermore, from January to April, immature males sang less than did adult males, but in June and July the reverse was true. In the breeding season (August to December inclusive), the time-budgets of males were determined to a large extent by the number of trips with food per hour they made to their mates and/or progeny; the higher the rate of food-trips the more time males foraged. When rearing nestlings, males made an average of five food-trips per hour to their young and foraged for 83.3% of observation time, significantly greater for both factors than at any other stage of the breeding cycle. Paired males foraged least of all during the nest-site selection stage (60.8%), but this value was significantly higher than that for bachelors (57.4%). As only females built nests, incubated and brooded, their time-budgets were greatly influenced by the stage of the breeding cycle they were engaged in. They foraged most when tending juveniles (82.0%). In contrast to their partners, females raising nestlings foraged for only 42.6% of time because they spent 46.7% of their time brooding. Females foraged least of all in the incubation stage (12.9%) when they incubated for about 80% of their time. In general, the results of this time-budget study support the findings of investigators into the time- and energy-budgets for other species. Without a change in food availability or energy content per food item, when birds require more energy they spend more time foraging. Winter was the season when Robins spent almost all their time in behaviours associated with self-maintenance, particularly foraging. At that time of year they devoted less time to behaviours associated with reproduction than they did during summer and autumn. It seems that Robins began breeding as soon as the environmental conditions enabled them, in the daylight hours available, to meet the energy costs of self-maintenance and breeding at the same time. Other investigators have shown that flights and yolk formation require large energy inputs to sustain. In support of this finding, female Robins that build nests and form yolks simultaneously, foraged for as much of their time as possible and had their food intake supplemented by that provided by their partners. Similarly, parent birds feeding nestlings or juveniles devoted most of their time to foraging. The moult, a process known to be of considerable energetic cost to birds, was undertaken by Robins at the most favourable time of year for self-maintenance and they stopped breeding in order to do so. Thus, when moulting, they spent a minimum of time meeting their self-maintenance requirements and so were able to devote a large proportion of their time to foraging in order to find enough food to meet the energy costs of feather replacement

Was Tropical Cyclone Heta or Hunting by People Responsible for Decline of the Lupe (Ducula pacifica) (Aves: Columbidae) Population on Niue during 1994–2004?

v. ill. 23 cm.QuarterlyOn 6 January 2004, Tropical Cyclone Heta devastated much of the South Pacific island nation of Niue. The forest suffered extensive damage, particularly to the north-western sector, with many trees uprooted and others stripped of branches and foliage. Even though some patches of forest in the southeast sustained little damage, many lupe (Pacific pigeon, Ducula pacifica) and kulukulu (purple-crowned fruit dove, Ptilinopus porphyraceus) entered eastern villages in search of food and water after the cyclone, a very unusual behavior. This paper details our findings from a survey of some of Niue’s forest birds carried out during September 2004 and compares these with results from a similar survey in September 1994. Five-minute point count data, an index of conspicuousness, from three transects showed that heahea (Polynesian triller, Lalage maculosa) were more abundant in 2004 than in 1994, that the results were variable from transect to transect for miti (Polynesian starling, Aplonis tabuensis) and kulukulu, but that significantly fewer lupe were detected along all three transects in 2004 than previously. We tentatively suggest that the decline in the lupe population was caused mainly by unsustainable human hunting during 1994–2004, rather than mortality caused by the cyclone