Species-specific responses to landscape fragmentation: implications for management strategies

Habitat fragmentation affects the integrity of many species, but little is known about species-specific sensitivity to fragmentation. Here, we compared the genetic structure of four freshwater fish species differing in their body size (Leuciscus cephalus; Leuciscus leuciscus; Gobio gobio and Phoxinus phoxinus) between a fragmented and a continuous landscape. We tested if, overall, fragmentation affected the genetic structure of these fish species, and if these species differed in their sensitivity to fragmentation. Fragmentation negatively affected the genetic structure of these species. Indeed, irrespective of the species identity, allelic richness and heterozygosity were lower, and population divergence was higher in the fragmented than in the continuous landscape. This response to fragmentation was highly species-specific, with the smallest fish species (P. phoxinus) being slightly affected by fragmentation. On the contrary, fish species of intermediate body size (L. leuciscus and G. gobio) were highly affected, whereas the largest fish species (L. cephalus) was intermediately affected by fragmentation. We discuss the relative role of dispersal ability and effective population size on the responses to fragmentation we report here. The weirs studied here are of considerable historical importance. We therefore conclude that restoration programmes will need to consider both this societal context and the biological characteristics of the species sharing this ecosyste

Vitalism and the Resistance to Experimentation on Life in the Eighteenth Century

There is a familiar opposition between a ‘Scientific Revolution’ ethos and practice of experimentation, including experimentation on life, and a ‘vitalist’ reaction to this outlook. The former is often allied with different forms of mechanism – if all of Nature obeys mechanical laws, including living bodies, ‘iatromechanism’ should encounter no obstructions in investigating the particularities of animal-machines – or with more chimiatric theories of life and matter, as in the ‘Oxford Physiologists’. The latter reaction also comes in different, perhaps irreducibly heterogeneous forms, ranging from metaphysical and ethical objections to the destruction of life, as in Margaret Cavendish, to more epistemological objections against the usage of instruments, the ‘anatomical’ outlook and experimentation, e.g. in Locke and Sydenham. But I will mainly focus on a third anti-interventionist argument, which I call ‘vitalist’ since it is often articulated in the writings of the so-called Montpellier Vitalists, including their medical articles for the Encyclopédie. The vitalist argument against experimentation on life is subtly different from the metaphysical, ethical and epistemological arguments, although at times it may borrow from any of them. It expresses a Hippocratic sensibility – understood as an artifact of early modernity, not as some atemporal trait of medical thought – in which Life resists the experimenter, or conversely, for the experimenter to grasp something about Life, it will have to be without torturing or radically intervening in it. I suggest that this view does not have to imply that Nature is something mysterious or sacred; nor does the vitalist have to attack experimentation on life in the name of some ‘vital force’ – which makes it less surprising to find a vivisectionist like Claude Bernard sounding so close to the vitalists

Diderot et les sciences de la vie dans l'Encyclopédie

Roselyne Rey : Diderot and the Life Sciences in the Encyclopédie. The life sciences were always very important for Diderot, both in his own works and in the Encyclopédie. This importance can be seen in three areas, those of animality, reproduction and sensibility ; in all of these, what is at stake is the frontier between the animate and the inanimate, or between life and death. Diderot comes to the conclusion that life is present everywhere, an idea that is reflected in his style of writing.Rey Roselyne. Diderot et les sciences de la vie dans l'Encyclopédie. In: Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie, n°18-19, 1995. pp. 47-53

Pascal Duris : Linné et la France (1780-1993). Coll. « Histoire des idées et critique littéraire ». 1993

Rey Roselyne. Pascal Duris : Linné et la France (1780-1993). Coll. « Histoire des idées et critique littéraire ». 1993. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°26, 1994. Economie et politique. pp. 625-626

Frank and Serena Kafker, The encyclopedists as individuals: a biographical dictionary of the authors of the Encyclopédie, SVEC 257, 1988

Rey Roselyne. Frank and Serena Kafker, The encyclopedists as individuals: a biographical dictionary of the authors of the Encyclopédie, SVEC 257, 1988. In: Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie, n°7, 1989. pp. 157-159

La théorie de la sécrétion chez Bordeu, modèle de la physiologie et de la pathologie vitalistes

Roselyne Rey : Bordeu's theory of secretion, a model of vitalist physiology and pathology. Bordeu dealt a serious blow to iatromechanism when he demonstrated, by means of anatomical and pathological observations, that secretion was not the result of mechanical compressing action or of filtration of the humours, but a product of the gland's own activity. He insisted on the specific sensitivity of each gland for each secretion, and his examination of the three phases of secretory activity led him to propose a general model for interpreting the organism on the lines of his vitalist conceptions and to emphasize the identity of physiological and pathological phenomena.Rey Roselyne. La théorie de la sécrétion chez Bordeu, modèle de la physiologie et de la pathologie vitalistes. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°23, 1991. Physiologie et médecine. pp. 45-58

J.P. Jouary, Diderot et la matière vivante

Rey Roselyne. J.P. Jouary, Diderot et la matière vivante. In: Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie, n°16, 1994. pp. 164-166