Ecocriticism: a theoretical biosphere

This essay reflects on the changing trend of Ecocriticism from a certain phobia towards theory to an exponential growth of theoretical approaches. Ecocriticism’s initial rejection of the idea that everything was either socially and/or linguistically constructed went against the grain of most literary theories. However, Ecocriticism has proved very diverse and eclectic in combining different approaches and disciplines, offering new readings of literary and cultural texts; moreover, its relevance to our contemporary world and environmental crisis have turned it into a fruitful theoretical biosphere. This trend is illustrated with three discussions of diverse cross-fertilizations: contrasting interpretations of the pastoral mode, the combination of postcolonialism and ecocriticism and, finally, the use of law and philosophy to address issues of environmental justice and ecological justice for the more-than-human world

Echolocating toothed whales use ultra-fast echo-kinetic responses to track evasive prey (sofware)

Visual predators rely on fast-acting optokinetic responses to track and capture agile prey. Most toothed whales, however, rely on echolocation for hunting and have converged on biosonar clicking rates reaching 500/s during prey pu rsuits. If echoes are processed on a click by click basis, as assumed, neural responses 100x faster than those in vision are required to keep pace with this information flow. Using high resolution bio-logging of wild predator prey interactions we show that toothed whales adjust clicking rates to track prey movement within 50 200 ms of prey escape responses. Hypothesising that these stereotyped biosonar adjustments are elicited by sudden prey accelerations, we measured echo kinetic responses from trained harb our porpoises to a moving target and found similar latencies. High biosonar sampling rates are, therefore, not supported by extreme speeds of neural processing and muscular responses. Instead, the neuro kinetic response times in echolocation are similar to those of tracking responses in vision, suggesting a common neural underpinning