Cultural connections: The Role of the Arts and Humanities in Competitiveness and Local Development

This report considers how the arts and cultural institutions contribute to the appeal of place. Cultural institutions are a prominent part of UK society – and many have a rich and long heritage. The impact of such institutions has often been evaluated in terms of engagement and participation or on the direct economic impact of cultural institutions. This study primarily focuses on the wider role of cultural institutions in their local economies; their innovative activities; how they connect to other local organisations such as universities; and how they collaborate with academics from the Arts and Humanities

How do weaponless male fiddler crabs avoid aggression?

Mimicry of females enables weaker males in many species to avoid intrasexual aggression. In fiddler crabs (Uca annulipes), males use their major claw in aggressive interactions to acquire and defend a territory. Males that have autotomised their major claw will be disadvantaged in fighting, but might use their temporary resemblance to females to avoid costly aggressive encounters with other males. We investigated whether: (1) courting males mistake clawless male fiddler crabs for females; (2) clawless males are able to acquire, defend and retain territories as successfully as intact males; and (3) clawless males are more cautious than intact males. Clawless and intact males differed in burrow acquisition methods and fighting behaviour, but were equally successful at acquiring and retaining burrows. While courting males treated clawless males as female, we found no evidence that clawless males mimic the behaviour of females, or that they exploit the advantage of their mistaken identity. Clawless males further appear to avoid male aggression by altering their territorial strategies to minimise the potential for conflict

The battle of the sexes? Territory acquisition and defence in male and female fiddler crabs

In many territorial species males invest substantially in weapons, which they use in fights to acquire and maintain territories that ultimately give them access to females. Females often live within male territories or in female-only areas that are segregated from males. Under these circumstances, females do not have to compete directly with males for space, and in the context of territory acquisition and defence there is therefore no cost to being weaponless. In fiddler crabs, however, weaponless females hold territories among well-armed males. How do they do this? Observations and replacement experiments were carried out on Uca annulipes to determine how males and females acquire and defend territories. Weaponless females were as capable as well-armed males of both acquiring and defending a burrow. Females acquired burrows by seeking out empty ones, while males acquired them by evicting male and female burrow owners. After acquiring a burrow, males mainly fought with male neighbours and females with female neighbours. Both sexes were equally likely to be evicted from their burrow and the likelihood that they remained on their territory for 24 h or more was the same. Males and females thus used different strategies of burrow acquisition and defence, and the male strategy appeared to be more costly. We discuss possible explanations for these differences

Nature-positive goals for an organisation's food consumption

Organizations are increasingly committing to biodiversity protection targets with focus on ‘nature-positive’ outcomes, yet examples of how to feasibly achieve these targets are needed. Here we propose an approach to achieve nature-positive targets with respect to the embodied biodiversity impacts of an organization’s food consumption. We quantify these impacts using a comprehensive database of life-cycle environmental impacts from food, and map exploratory strategies to meet defined targets structured according to a mitigation and conservation hierarchy. By considering the varying needs and values across the organization’s internal community, we identify a range of targeted approaches towards mitigating impacts, which balance top-down and bottom-up actions to different degrees. Delivering ambitious nature-positive targets within current constraints will be challenging, particularly given the need to mitigate cumulative impacts. Our results evidence that however committed an organization is to being nature positive in its food provision, this is unachievable in the absence of systems change