Relationship between urbanization and bat community structure in national parks of the southeastern U.S.

Urbanization and development are predicted to increase considerably in the United States over the next several decades, and this is expected to result in large-scale habitat loss, fragmentation and loss of wildlife species. Thus, natural parks and preserves are becomingly increasingly important in the conservation of regional biodiversity. We used mist-nets and AnabatII acoustic detectors to survey bats in 10 national parks in the southeastern U.S. and examined the relationship between bat community structure and development in the surrounding 5 km. We predicted that species richness would increase with park size and that species richness and evenness would decrease with development. Species richness was not related to development or any other landscape characteristics including park size. In contrast, species evenness declined with increasing development. Percent Developed land in the surrounding 5 km area was the only variable that entered into the stepwise regression model. The decrease in species evenness in the urban parks was due to the dominance of big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) in these parks. The percentage of big brown bats in our captures was positively related to percent Developed land in the surrounding area. Our data suggest that urban parks may be important for conserving regional bat biodiversity. However, the low species evenness in these parks suggests that some bat species may be susceptible to the effects of urbanization and may be extirpated over time. Thus, management of urban as well as rural parks should strive to conserve as much bat roosting and foraging habitat as possible.     

SUBJECT AND SUBSTRATUM : ON JAPANESE IMPERIAL NATIONALISM

This paper addresses the theoretical and philosophical questions concerning how an individual identified him/herself as a member of an ethnic, racial, or national community in the context of Japanese Imperialist discourse during the 1930's. The central focus is Tanabe Hajime. Together with his mentor Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe established the so-called Kyoto School of Philosophy in the 1920's. With his background in the philosophy of sciences and mathematics, and modern European metaphysics, Tanabe created a philosophical argument for the multi-ethnic nation-state, and proposed the universalistic concept of Japanese national identity which positively evaluates and integrates individuals of different ethnic backgrounds into one. He constructed the Logic of Species (Shu no Ronri) according to which a member of the Japanese Empire could identify with Japan precisely because she or he can participate in the Japanese State which represents the whole, inclusive of all the ethnic groups. Relying upon the Hegelian concept of negativity, he explained the two different levels of belonging: particularistic belonging to the specific identity (shu) such as ethnicity, and universalistic belonging to the generic identity (rui). And he further demonstrated that ethnic identity is far from fixed, and is brought into the subject's self-awareness only insofar as the subject negates it and is free from it. In other words, the subject becomes aware of her/his ethnic origin only when s/he negates it thereby participating in a higher order of social formation, the State, under which ethnic multiplicity is subsumed. Thus the species of ethnicity is constituted only insofar as it is negatively mediated by the genus, that is, the State. Tanabe saw the essential form of human freedom in this negative relation of the subject to his ethnicity, and understood a subject's belonging to a nation as a dialectic and negative process of mediation between the species and the genus. While postwar Japan was built upon the premises of ethnic nationalism, Japanese imperial nationalism of the pre-war period was afraid of ethnic nationalisms which could challenge the Empire's rhetoric of multiethnicity and pluralism. Tanabe's Logic of Species was a response to such needs of Japanese Imperialism and it represented a philosophical attempt to undermine ethnic nationalism. Not surprisingly, it served as a metaphysical foundation for the idea of the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere.     

进化的转义

达尔文的影响力并没有很快抵达中国。近代关于他的记录出现于19世纪70年代之后的译作、报刊、私人笔记或考卷等之中。传教士、留洋人士在早期的传播中扮演了重要角色——尽管他们对于达尔文的介绍常是模糊且不得要领的。严复的杰出工作开启了一个进化的时代,但充斥在报刊和人们思想之中的是一种非达尔文式的进化观念。《物种起源》(下文称《起源》)的翻译大抵可分为两个阶段——本文关注的是第一阶段。《起源》的翻译本可以为纠正进化的误解带来希望,然而译者马君武并没有去颠覆新近形成的进化范式。通过对达尔文文本的修正,马氏尽可能地弥合:达尔文的学说与先前已被灌输给那个时代的进化观念之间的差异。本文的第二部分通过对《起源》第三章和第四章译文的解析,来探究那个年代进化的转义。     

Semiparametric Bayesian classification with longitudinal markers

Summary.  We analyse data from a study involving 173 pregnant women. The data are observed values of the β human chorionic gonadotropin hormone measured during the first 80 days of gestational age, including from one up to six longitudinal responses for each woman. The main objective in this study is to predict normal versus abnormal pregnancy outcomes from data that are available at the early stages of pregnancy. We achieve the desired classification with a semiparametric hierarchical model. Specifically, we consider a Dirichlet process mixture prior for the distribution of the random effects in each group. The unknown random-effects distributions are allowed to vary across groups but are made dependent by using a design vector to select different features of a single underlying random probability measure. The resulting model is an extension of the dependent Dirichlet process model, with an additional probability model for group classification. The model is shown to perform better than an alternative model which is based on independent Dirichlet processes for the groups. Relevant posterior distributions are summarized by using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.     

Habitat origins and microhabitat preferences of urban plant species

Urban vegetation is commonly described as dominated by weedy species that are adapted to human disturbance. In this study, we determined the original (pre-agriculture) habitats of urban plant species sampled quantitatively in the spontaneous vegetation of a university campus in Halifax, Nova Scotia (eastern Canada). We sampled 11 distinct patch types corresponding to different built forms. Differences in vegetation among patch types were related in part to environmental variables such as soil moisture and light availability. The urban vegetation was dominated by species from rocky habitats such as cliffs and talus slopes, with lesser representation from grassland and floodplain habitats. When compared to a null model of species origins based on the global area and species richness of different original habitats, species from rock outcrops and grassland habitats were overrepresented in the urban vegetation. These results contrast with the received view that cities represented highly “unnatural” ecosystems: built form appears to replicate the habitat templates required by rock outcrop species. Urban ecological theory should incorporate the replication of habitat analogs by built forms in addition to the creation of ecologically novel habitats.     

A Similarity Measure Based on Species Proportions

ABSTRACT

There are several indices for measuring the similarity of two populations, including the ratio of the number of shared species to the number of distinct species (Jaccard's index) and the conditional probability of observing a shared species (Smith et al., 1996 Smith , W. , Solow , A. R. , Preston , P. E. ( 1996 ). An estimator of species overlap using a modified beta-binomial model. Biometrics 52 : 1472 – 1477 . [CSA] [CROSSREF] [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, these indices only take into account the number of species and species proportions of shared species. In this article, we propose a new similarity index which includes the species proportions of both the shared and non shared species in each population, and also propose a Nonparametric Maximum Likelihood Estimator (NPMLE) for this index. Bootstrap and delta methods are used to evaluate the standard errors of the NPMLE. Based on a loss function, we also compare a class of nonparametric estimators for the proposed index in various situations.     

Testing list effects and diagnosing individual catchabilities in the Rasch model

The Rasch model is useful in the problem of estimating the population size from multiple incomplete lists. It is of great interest to tell whether there are list effects and whether individuals differ in their catchabilities. These two important model selection problems can be easily addressed conditionally. A conditional likelihood ratio test is used to evaluate the list effects and several graphical methods are used to diagnose the individual catchabilities, while neither the unknown population size nor the unknown mixing distribution of individual catchabilities is required to be estimated. Three epidemiological applications are used for illustration.     

Effects of urbanization on species richness: A review of plants and animals

Many studies have described the effects of urbanization on species richness. These studies indicate that urbanization can increase or decrease species richness, depending on several variables. Some of these variables include: taxonomic group, spatial scale of analysis, and intensity of urbanization. Recent reviews of birds (the most-studied group) indicate that species richness decreases with increasing urbanization in most cases but produces no change or even increases richness in some studies. Here I expand beyond the bird studies by reviewing 105 studies on the effects of urbanization on the species richness of non-avian species: mammals, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates and plants. For all groups, species richness tends to be reduced in areas with extreme urbanization (i.e., central urban core areas). However, the effects of moderate levels of urbanization (i.e., suburban areas) vary significantly among groups. Most of the plant studies (about 65%) indicate increasing species richness with moderate urbanization whereas only a minority of invertebrate studies (about 30%) and a very small minority of non-avian vertebrate studies (about 12%) show increasing species richness. Possible explanations for these results are discussed, including the importance of nonnative species importation, spatial heterogeneity, intermediate disturbance and scale as major factors influencing species richness.     

Establishing roots at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport Garden: Landscapes of national identity

With the understanding that the planning of public space is a discursive practice, this article examines the cultural meanings encoded in the design of the grounds around Israel's main airport, Ben Gurion International. Using the example of Terminal 3, the article discusses how the State of Israel leverages landscaped space as an ideological tool in the struggle for control over symbolic expressions of national identity. The design decisions here are framed in the context of the all important Zionist trope of ‘redemption’, or land reclamation in the image of Zion. The airport's ‘Seven Species Garden’ is explained as part of a widespread mythology of an autochthonous people/land bond, deeply rooted in Jewish-Israeli consciousness, which draws upon the Bible for territorial legitimacy and national identity. Finally, the Orientalist bias betrayed in the airport grounds effectively bars entry of the county's largest minority to the ‘gateway’ of Israeli national space because such references are based on ethnicity.     

A Multiple-community Overlap Measure Based on a Probabilistic Approach

Species diversity indices are designed to measure the species diversity of a community and to compare the species distribution structure of two communities. The Shannon and Simpson indices are for describing one community, and the Jaccard and Morisita indices are for comparing two communities. Only a few indices allow the simultaneous comparison of three or more communities. In this study, we propose a multiple-community similarity index based on a probabilistic approach, and compare it with other multiple-community indices. Empirical examples are considered as a demonstration of the proposed similarity indices.