Evolution of sociality in Anelosimus Spiders

Most spiders are solitary and aggressive towards cohorts, but some have been found to live in groups and forage communally, even sharing in brood care. The benefits of group living outweigh the costs of inbreeding for these spiders, but how sociality has developed in arachnids is yet unknown. In this study I test the neoteny hypothesis for the origin of sociality in spiders in the Anelosimusgenus, which contains many of the known social spiders. The neoteny hypothesis predicts that due to retaining juvenile traits and maturing at an earlier morph, social spiders will have smaller body sizes than their solitary relatives. Using a novel phylogenetic tree of Anelosimusspecies and other outgroups, I used correlative ancestral reconstruction of traits along with analyses of variance to see if body size decreased with an increase in social level. The tree contained 8 evolutionary replicas of sociality (9 social species, 8 independent evolutions of sociality), therefore making it the perfect platform to test the neoteny hypothesis. There was no difference in body size between sociality levels, and the neoteny hypothesis was rejected. I did however, find evidence that social spiders have smaller clutch sizes, as well as a female-biased sex ratio. This supports the hypothesis that social species evolved small clutch sizes with more females to combat extreme oscillations in their population size, and tells us more about how their sociality may have come to be

Basking shark hotspots on the West Coast of Scotland: Key sites, threats and implications for conservation of the species

Copyright © Scottish Natural Heritage 2009.The Wildlife Trusts’ Basking Shark Project conducted effort-corrected line transect surveys for the basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) along the west coast of Scotland between 2002- 2006. A total of 11,179km of linear transects consisting of 956 hours duration were covered, and a total of 593 sharks were recorded whilst on transect. The project aimed to establish whether key sites (hotspots) existed for the species within the overall region, where significant numbers of sharks could be seen at the surface on a regular basis. This information could then be used to develop practical means of protecting surface swimming sharks at such sites, such as educational maps of the hotspot sites for distribution to leisure and commercial boat users, and to inform future developments within the marine environment e.g. fisheries and renewable energy developments.The project enjoyed the support of many Organisations, both financially and in spirit. These include Natural England, The Wildlife Trusts, WWF-UK, Earthwatch Institute (Europe), The Born Free Foundation, The Shark Foundation (Hai Stiftung), The Shark Trust, the Marine Conservation Society, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Express Group, the Save Our Seas Foundation, Volvo Ocean Adventure, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, and Canon (UK). Their support was invaluable

The new insider trading provisions

It is unfair to the investing public and detrimental to the interests of the security markets for a person to trade on the basis of inside information. In this short dissertation, the laws regulating insider trading in South Africa prior to the current legislative provisions are briefly discussed. It is found that the old provisions were inadequate in deterring and punishing insider trading activities. The current legislative provisions are analysed in detail. It becomes clear that whilst the current provisions are a substantial improvement on their predecessor, certain aspects need to be reconsidered. These include the widening of their scope to include trading in all kinds of derivatives; the reformulation of the statutory civil action and the empowerment of the securities regulation panel to bring a civil action against insider traders.Private LawLL.M

Observing Planet-driven Dust Spirals with ALMA

Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) continuum observations of thermal emission from the dust component of protoplanetary disks have revealed an abundance of substructures that may be interpreted as evidence for embedded planets, but planet-driven spiral arms—perhaps one of the most compelling lines of evidence—have proven comparatively elusive. In this work, we test the capabilities of ALMA to detect the planet-driven spiral signal in continuum emission. Carrying out hydrodynamic simulations and radiative transfer calculations, we present synthetic Band 7 continuum images for a wide range of disk and observing conditions. We show that thermal mass planets at tens of astronomical units typically drive spirals detectable within a few hours of integration time, and the detectable planet mass may be as low as ∼Neptune mass (0.3 Mth). The grains probed by ALMA form spirals morphologically identical to the underlying gas spiral. The temperature of the dust spiral is crucial in determining its contrast, and spirals are easier to detect in disks with an adiabatic equation of state and longer cooling times. Resolving the spiral is not necessary for its detection; with the help of residual maps, the optimal beam size is a few times the spiral width at a constant noise level. Finally, we show how the presence of gaps and rings can impair our ability to recognize colocated spirals. Our work demonstrates the planet-finding potential of the current design specification of ALMA, and suggests that observing capability is not the bottleneck in searching for spirals induced by thermal mass planets

A Collaborative Children\u27s Literature Book Club for Teacher Candidates

This paper highlights the two-year journey of an extra-curricular book club for teacher candidates as they explored children’s literature in order to further their teaching practice. Initial themes were confirmed and refined as the journey of the book club concluded after two years. A sociocultural theoretical framework guided this work and considered Cambourne’s (1988) conditions of learning, specifically immersion in texts, as well as the important role of social contexts in developing shared text meanings. A qualitative methodology, drawing on participatory action research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005) and taking a case study approach to sharing the case of this collaborative children’s literature book club, was used