bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Incursion and excursion of Antarctic biota: past, present and future
Authors: Barnes D. K. A. , Hodgson D. A. , Convey P. , Allen C. S. , Clarke A. 
Published: February 2006

ABSTRACTAim To investigate the major paradigms of intense isolation and little anthropogenic influence around Antarctica and to examine the timings and scales of the modification of the southern polar biota.Location Antarctica and surrounding regions.Methods First, mechanisms of and evidence for long‐term isolation are reviewed. These include continental drift, the development of a surrounding deep‐water channel and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). They also include levels of endemism, richness and distinctiveness of assemblages. Secondly, evidence for past and modern opportunities for species transport are investigated. Comparative levels of alien establishments are also examined around the Southern Ocean.Discussion On a Cenozoic time‐scale, it is clear that Gondwana's fragmentation led to increasing geographical isolation of Antarctica and the initiation of the ACC, which restricted biota exchange to low levels while still permitting some movement of biota. On a shorter Quaternary time‐scale, the continental ice‐sheet, influenced by solar (Milankovitch) cycles, has expanded and contracted periodically, covering and exposing terrestrial and continental shelf habitats. There were probably refugia for organisms during each glacial maxima. It is also likely that new taxa were introduced into Antarctica during cycles of ice sheet and oceanic front movement. The current situation (a glacial minimum) is not ‘normal’; full interglacials represent only 10% of the last 430 ka. On short (ecological) time‐scales, many natural dispersal processes (airborne, oceanic eddy, rafting and hitch‐hiking on migrants) enable the passage of biota to and from Antarctica. In recent years, humans have become influential both directly by transporting organisms and indirectly by increasing survival and establishment prospects via climate change.Main conclusions Patterns of endemism and alien establishment are very different across taxa, land and sea, and north vs. south of the Polar Frontal Zone. Establishment conditions, as much as transport, are important in limiting alien establishment. Three time‐scales emerge as important in the modification of Antarctica's biota. The natural ‘interglacial’ process of reinvasion of Antarctica is being influenced strongly by humans.
Continental fire density patterns in South America
Authors: Di Bella C. M. , Jobbágy E. G. , Paruelo J. M. , Pinnock S. 
Published: February 2006

ABSTRACTAims  Quantification of the effects and interactions of natural and anthropogenic factors, including climate, canopy structure, land use and management conditions, on vegetation burning. The study of these relationships is fundamental to predict regional fire patterns and develop sound management and regulation policies for biomass burning at national and global levels.Location  Southern South America, including Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile.Methods  Based on National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration–Advance Very High Resolution Radiometer (NOAA–AVHRR) satellite images, we identified fires in southern South America with a daily frequency for two periods (1999/2000 and 2000/01) using a contextual fire detection algorithm and integrating the density of these fires at a monthly scale into a 0.5 × 0.5° grid. We combined vegetation and climate global databases and land use information from national census data to explore the relationship of these factors with fires across the region.Results  The whole study region had a mean fire density of 0.10 and 0.05 fires km−2 year−1 in 1999/2000 and 2000/01, respectively, with extreme values as high as 1.37 in fires km−2 year−1 in Para State, Brazil. Water deficit estimates, derived from a climatic water balance, showed the better correlation with fire density (r = 0.28; P < 0.001; n = 4467), interacting strongly with land use. In areas with low agricultural use fire density increased with water deficit, whereas in highly agricultural areas this relationship was not observed. Agriculture significantly reduced fire density in prairies and savannas but increased its frequency in rain forests.Main conclusions  These results suggest that agriculture prevents biomass burning in semiarid areas but enhances it in humid environments, where biomass accumulates at faster rates.
Double Hierarchical Generalized Linear Models (With Discussion)
Authors: Lee Youngjo , Nelder John A. 
Published: February 2006

SummaryWe propose a class of double hierarchical generalized linear models in which random effects can be specified for both the mean and dispersion. Heteroscedasticity between clusters can be modelled by introducing random effects in the dispersion model, as is heterogeneity between clusters in the mean model. This class will, among other things, enable models with heavy-tailed distributions to be explored, providing robust estimation against outliers. The h-likelihood provides a unified framework for this new class of models and gives a single algorithm for fitting all members of the class. This algorithm does not require quadrature or prior probabilities.
Unpacking cosmopolitanism for the social sciences: a research agenda
Authors: Beck Ulrich , Sznaider Natan 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis article calls for a re‐conceptualization of the social sciences by asking for a cosmopolitan turn. The intellectual undertaking of redefining cosmopolitanism is a trans‐disciplinary one, which includes geography, anthropology, ethnology, international relations, international law, political philosophy and political theory, and now sociology and social theory. Methodological nationalism, which subsumes society under the nation‐state, has until now made this task almost impossible. The alternative, a ‘cosmopolitan outlook’, is a contested term and project. Cosmopolitanism must not be equalized with the global (or globalization), with ‘world system theory’ (Wallerstein), with ‘world polity’ (Meyer and others), or with ‘world‐society’ (Luhmann). All of those concepts presuppose basic dualisms, such as domestic/foreign or national/international, which in reality have become ambiguous. Methodological cosmopolitanism opens up new horizons by demonstrating how we can make the empirical investigation of border crossings and other transnational phenomena possible.
The cosmopolitan imagination: critical cosmopolitanism and social theory
Authors: Delanty Gerard 
Published: February 2006

AbstractCritical cosmopolitanism is an emerging direction in social theory and reflects both an object of study and a distinctive methodological approach to the social world. It differs from normative political and moral accounts of cosmopolitanism as world polity or universalistic culture in its conception of cosmopolitanism as socially situated and as part of the self‐constituting nature of the social world itself. It is an approach that shifts the emphasis to internal developmental processes within the social world rather than seeing globalization as the primary mechanism. This signals a post‐universalistic kind of cosmopolitanism, which is not merely a condition of diversity but is articulated in cultural models of world openness through which societies undergo transformation. The cosmopolitan imagination is articulated in framing processes and cultural models by which the social world is constituted; it is therefore not reducible to concrete identities, but should be understood as a form of cultural contestation in which the logic of translation plays a central role. The cosmopolitan imagination can arise in any kind of society and at any time but it is integral to modernity, in so far as this is a condition of self‐problematization, incompleteness and the awareness that certainty can never be established once and for all. As a methodologically grounded approach, critical cosmopolitan sociology has a very specific task: to discern or make sense of social transformation by identifying new or emergent social realities.
Cosmopolitanism and violence: difficulties of judgment
Authors: Fine Robert 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis paper addresses the difficult relation of cosmopolitan ideas to the existence of war and violence. It explores the ambivalences within the cosmopolitan outlook as it seeks to reconcile its attentiveness to the actuality of violence in the modern age with its normative vision of perpetual peace. I address these ambivalences through a discussion of a) what it is to learn from the catastrophes of the twentieth century; b) the contribution Kant's theory of cosmopolitan law to the solution to contemporary problems of violence; c) the reconstruction of cosmopolitan thinking in the wake of the Holocaust as an attempt to take atrocities seriously; d) the application of cosmopolitan criteria to the justification and authorization of humanitarian military intervention; and e) the attempt on the part of Habermas and Derrida to address the ambivalence involved in reconciling cosmopolitanism and violence in Kosovo and Iraq. While cosmopolitanism is usually understood as a reference to a worldly legal and institutional order, the cosmopolitan outlook is also a mode of understanding the world, an ethic of responsibility and an ongoing exercise of political judgment in the face of violence.
Vulnerability, violence and (cosmopolitan) ethics: Butler's Precarious Life*
Authors: McRobbie Angela 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThis article proposes that Butler's Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence provides a valuable contribution to the sociology of cosmopolitanism on the basis of a perspective which forcefully addresses the new sovereign power of the USA which reneges on the possibilities of cosmopolitanization by means of resurgent nationalism, extra‐legal modalities of militarization and incarceration (‘the new war prison’) and state powers now integrated into normalized practices of everyday governmentality. Butler's Foucauldian approach to power and subjectivity is contrasted with Beck's understanding of self‐reflexivity in cosmopolitanized society. Butler's feminist‐inspired approach to mourning and grief and her account of vulnerability and violence also encourage a response to recent acts of terrorism and subsequent wars by means of an ethics of non‐violence. Drawing on the Levinasian concept of ‘the face’ Butler explores the obligation posed by ‘the face’ to refuse violent confrontation. The article suggests a sociological reading of Butler's ethical account which throws light on issues pertinent to the cosmopolitanization thesis, through an interrogation of the relations of power and powerlessness which underlie encounters with otherness.
Classical sociology and cosmopolitanism: a critical defence of the social
Authors: Turner Bryan S. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractIt is frequently argued that classical sociology, if not sociology as a whole, cannot provide any significant insight into globalization, primarily because its assumptions about the nation‐state, national cultures and national societies are no longer relevant to a global world. Sociology cannot consequently contribute to a normative debate about cosmopolitanism, which invites us to consider loyalties and identities that reach beyond the nation‐state.My argument considers four principal topics. First, I defend the classical legacy by arguing that classical sociology involved the study of ‘the social’ not national societies. This argument is illustration by reference to Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons. Secondly, Durkheim specifically developed the notion of a cosmopolitan sociology to challenge the nationalist assumptions of his day. Thirdly, I attempt to develop a critical version of Max Weber's verstehende soziologie to consider the conditions for critical recognition theory in sociology as a necessary precondition of cosmopolitanism. Finally, I consider the limitations of some contemporary versions of global sociology in the example of ‘flexible citizenship’ to provide an empirical case study of the limitations of globalization processes and ‘sociology beyond society’. While many institutions have become global, some cannot make this transition. Hence, we should consider the limitations on as well as the opportunities for cosmopolitan sociology.
Microsatellite analysis of genetic diversity in fragmented South African buffalo populations
Authors: O'Ryan Colleen , Harley Eric H. , Bruford Michael W. , Beaumont Mark , Wayne Robert K. , Cherry Michael I. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractGenetic variation was measured in 105 African buffalo from four populations in South Africa to investigate the effects of habitat fragmentation. Levels of heterozygosity, allelic diversity and genetic differentiation among populations were quantified using seven polymorphic microsatellite markers. There was a significant correlation between the amount of genetic variation and population size, and differentiation was detected among all populations measured by FST and RST. We used likelihood analysis to infer the effective population sizes of each population and to determine whether the fragmented populations were historically differentiated from one another. The genetic estimates of census size were consistent with historical records, and no historical genetic differentiation could be inferred in the original population before fragmentation. These results are discussed in the light of conservation management of fragmented buffalo populations, particularly where natural gene flow is no longer possible.
Cryptic chromosomal variation in suni Neotragus moschatus (Artiodactyla, Bovidae)
Authors: Kingswood S. C. , Kumamoto A. T. , Charter S. J. , Jones M. L. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractThirty‐eight captive‐born suni (Neotragus moschatus) had chromosomal complements of 2n = 52–56 (fn = 60). Variation in diploid number was the result of two centric fusion polymorphisms: a 4;19 fusion and a putative 18;22 fusion. Specimens that were descendants of wild‐caught N. m. akeleyi and N. m. zuluensis were 2n = 52 and 56, respectively, but 2n = 53, 54, and 55 cytotypes were probably the result of hybridization in captivity between the two subspecies. Although populations of suni from different geographic regions are phenotypically indistinguishable, cytogenetic differences between N. m. akeleyi and N. m. zuluensis indicate that they should be recognized as distinct management units. Chromosomal variation among our panel of captive‐born specimens and evidence of higher perinatal mortality in supposed hybrid cytotypes suggest that these two subspecies be managed as separate populations, particularly with regard to captive breeding, reintroductions, and animal translocations. Insofar as our findings are restricted to the captive population, the cytogenetics of natural populations of suni should be investigated to determine if indeed N. m. akeleyi and N. m. zuluensis have fixed chromosomal differences or if the centric fusion polymorphisms found in captive animals also occur in wild suni.
Reproduction and population density: trade‐offs for the conservation of rhinos in situ
Authors: Rachlow Janet L. , Berger Joel 
Published: February 2006

AbstractAs the human population increases, wildlife is becoming restricted to protected remnants of ecosystems with boundaries that limit dispersal. The effect on large herbivores generally is an increase in population density. We investigated the relationship between population density and reproduction in white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) in Matobo National Park, Zimbabwe. Two lines of evidence were examined: (1) a contrast in reproduction between a high‐density and a low‐density population; and (2) a longitudinal analysis of changes in reproductive parameters of a fenced population as density increased by >200%. As density increased within the fenced area, the rates of population growth and recruitment of calves decreased, and the age at first reproduction for females increased significantly. Females in the low‐density population produced their first calves at significantly younger ages than those in the high‐density population. Loss of body condition was related to both population density and female reproductive status. Because most African rhinos exist in relatively small reserves, an understanding of the implications of restricted dispersal and increased population density on their demography is critical to their conservation in situ. Managers need to consider trade‐offs between enhanced safety from poaching and density‐dependent effects on reproduction in developing conservation strategies for rhinos and other rare, large species confined to reserve systems.
Habitat use and resource tracking by African Ceratogymna hornbills: implications for seed dispersal and forest conservation
Authors: Whitney Kenneth D. , Smith Thomas B. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractConservation of tropical forests requires an understanding of the seasonal patterns of abundance and distribution of important seed dispersers. In the forests of Central Africa, three species of hornbills in the genus Ceratogymna (Aves: Bucerotidae) provide dispersal for over 50 species of trees and lianas, yet their ecology is poorly known. We present the first empirical evidence for resource tracking and large‐scale movements by two of these species, which were previously considered resident. Hornbill numbers and fruit production were estimated over a one‐year period in the Dja Reserve, Cameroon. Monthly abundances of C. atrata and C. cylindricus varied four‐ and 12‐fold, respectively, and were predicted by community fruit availability as measured by fruitfall on a 4.3 km trail. In contrast, C. fistulator abundances varied little and were not related to fruit availability. Synchronous population fluctuations in sites 22 km distant were observed for atrata and cylindricus, but not for fistulator. Together, these results indicate that atrata and cylindricus populations track fruit resources via seasonal emigrations, while the fistulator population appears to be relatively sedentary. Comparisons of hornbill densities in primary and secondary forests suggest that they are important dispersers in both habitats, and will likely play larger roles in central African forest regeneration as more vulnerable seed dispersers are removed by hunting. If large seasonal movements of hornbills turn out to be a general phenomenon, effective management of central African forest reserves will require greater emphasis on reserve connectivity and on seasonal and spatial patterns of fruit production.
Testing for potential survey bias: the effect of roads, urban areas and nature reserves on a southern African mammal data set
Authors: Freitag S. , Hobson C. , Biggs H. C. , van Jaarsveld A. S. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractMammalian record collection densities and bias attributable to observer survey preferences are assessed for the former Transvaal region of South Africa using a geographic information system (GIS). A method is presented which may be used to distinguish between highly biased and relatively unbiased sampling densities. Small mammal survey records within the region appear to have been collected relatively independently of the road and urban area infrastructure and are not biased towards nature reserves. Large mammal data on the other hand has mostly been collected within existing conservation areas. Although this latter data set would appear to be highly biased, it does accurately reflect the current distributions of larger mammalian taxa, which are presently almost entirely restricted to conservation areas.
The role of habitat and mink predation in determining the status and distribution of water voles in England
Authors: Barreto Guillermo R. , Rushton Steve P. , Strachan Rob , Macdonald David W. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractOne hundred and sixty‐one river sites throughout the Thames catchment area were surveyed during the summer of 1995 and a number of habitat features were recorded in order to identify relevant habitat variables for the water vole (Arvicola terrestris; Arvicolidae). In addition, the role of the American mink (Mustela vision; Mustelidae) in determining the present distribution of water voles in the Thames region was investigated. The data were analysed by using generalized linear models (GLM).Water voles were found in places characterised by low banks, unmodified channels, vegetated bars, submerged vegetation and were tolerant of moderate levels of bank reinforcement. The presence of mink was the most important variable. The results suggest that the American mink is the main factor determining the current distribution of water voles in this area. Restoration and recreation of habitat for water voles are likely to be a powerful tool in the recovery of water vole populations. It is hypothesised that mink control will be necessary only while the water vole population is small; once the population starts to increase both species could co‐exist provided that the habitat is suitable.
Sorting out tigers (Panthera tigris): mitochondrial sequences, nuclear inserts, systematics, and conservation genetics
Authors: Cracraft Joel , Feinstein Julie , Vaughn Jeffrey , Helm‐Bychowski Kathleen 
Published: February 2006

AbstractSequences from complete mitochondrial cytochrome b genes of 34 tigers support the hypothesis that Sumatran tigers are diagnostically distinct from mainland populations. None of the latter, including Bengals, Siberians, or Indochinese tigers, were found to have fixed diagnostic characters. Phylogenetic analysis of these sequences confirms these results. Within the framework of a phylogenetic species concept, current evidence thus supports the recognition of two distinct taxa, and within the context of this definition they could be ranked at the species level. This paper also documents a previously unrecognized nuclear insert of mitochondrial DNA that includes, minimally, mitochondrial homologues of a control region that lacks the feline mitochondrial repeat sequences, a complete cytochrome b gene, and complete tRNAThr and tRNAsurPro genes. In a phylogenetic analysis of the nuclear cytochrome b‐like sequences and various feline mitochondrial sequences, the nuclear insert clusters with lion mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences, which suggests the insert is at least as old as the split between lions and tigers. The results of this study emphasize the importance of doing more to conserve Sumatran tigers. Because they are underrepresented in zoos relative to Bengals and Siberians, an effort should be made to increase captive breeding stocks of Sumatrans. That Sumatrans are a distinct taxonomic entity relative to mainland populations can be used in educational programs to increase conservation efforts within Indonesia.
Branching models predict loss of many bird and mammal orders within centuries
Authors: McKinney Michael L. 
Published: February 2006

AbstractBranching (birth–death) models are used to project the time to extinction for bird and mammal orders. While such projections are very coarse, they provide information on how long fundamental units of biodiversity, as represented by such higher taxa as orders, will persist at specified rates of species extinction. The results of a basic decay model indicate that, if all threatened species in each order go extinct within the next 100 years, and this species extinction rate continues indefinitely, then half the species in most orders will disappear in a few hundred years or less. This result is robust and is in agreement with other estimates. A more detailed branching model indicates that most bird and mammal orders will become 100% extinct in a few thousand years if current extinction trends are extrapolated. This projection is also relatively robust, as it is consistently produced using a number of different methods and estimates of future species extinction rates. Mammal orders generally have substantially shorter half‐lives and time to 100% extinction than bird orders because of a combination of fewer species per order and higher species extinction rates.