Biodiversity and biotechnology

The maintenance of biodiversity is urged from many quarters and on grounds ranging from aesthetic considerations to its usefulness, particularly for biotechnology. But regardless of the grounds for preserving biodiversity, writers are generally in agreement that it should be preserved. But, in examining the various references biodiversity, such as species diversity, genetic diversity, and habitat diversity, it is apparent that we cannot aim to preserve biodiversityas such, since there are a number of conflicts in any such undertaking. In preserving one aspect of biodiversity, we damage another aspect. Five arguments which attempt to ground our moral concern for biodiversity are reviewed and critiqued, not only for their consistency but also for their power to move us to action. The final section of the paper shows how conflicts in the values of personal and environmental health can impair ethical action and especially policy formation.An earlier version of this paper was read at the conference on Agriculture, Food, and Human Values: Tradition and Change, Orlando, Florida, October 7–9, 1987.     

Creating and validating GIS measures of urban design for health research

Studies relating urban design to health have been impeded by the unfeasibility of conducting field observations across large areas and the lack of validated objective measures of urban design. This study describes measures for five dimensions of urban design - imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency, and complexity - created using public geographic information systems (GIS) data from the US Census and city and state government. GIS measures were validated for a sample of 588 New York City block faces using a well-documented field observation protocol. Correlations between GIS and observed measures ranged from 0.28 to 0.89. Results show valid urban design measures can be constructed from digital sources.     

Remote Antarctic feeding ground important for east Australian humpback whales

Understanding the dynamics of population recovery is particularly complex when an organism has multiple, remote breeding and feeding grounds separated by one of the longest known migration routes. This study reports on the most comprehensive assessment of humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) movements between remote Antarctic waters south of New Zealand and east Australia (EA), and the migratory corridors and breeding grounds of Australia and Oceania. A total of 112 individual whales were identified; 57 from microsatellites and 61 by fluke with 23 % (n = 26) matched to sites outside Antarctica. Despite large datasets from other southern regions being included in the comparison, the whales were predominantly linked to EA (n = 24). Only two matches to the Oceania catalogues directly north was surprising; therefore the primary feeding grounds of these endangered whales still remain unknown. The confirmation of the Balleny Islands as an important feeding ground for EA whales could provide an insight into reasons behind the rapid recovery of this population. Determining the feeding grounds of Oceania’s whales may explain whether prey energetics or migration length are limiting factors to their recovery and will allow an understanding of future ecosystem changes in these whales.     

Vascular plant extinction in the continental United States and Canada

Extinction rates are expected to increase during the Anthropocene. Current extinction rates of plants and many animals remain unknown. We quantified extinctions among the vascular flora of the continental United States and Canada since European settlement. We compiled data on apparently extinct species by querying plant conservation databases, searching the literature, and vetting the resulting list with botanical experts. Because taxonomic opinion varies widely, we developed an index of taxonomic uncertainty (ITU). The ITU ranges from A to F, with A indicating unanimous taxonomic recognition and F indicating taxonomic recognition by only a single author. The ITU allowed us to rigorously evaluate extinction rates. Our data suggest that 51 species and 14 infraspecific taxa, representing 33 families and 49 genera of vascular plants, have become extinct in our study area since European settlement. Seven of these taxa exist in cultivation but are extinct in the wild. Most extinctions occurred in the west, but this outcome may reflect the timing of botanical exploration relative to settlement. Sixty-four percent of extinct plants were single-site endemics, and many occurred outside recognized biodiversity hotspots. Given the paucity of plant surveys in many areas, particularly prior to European settlement, the actual extinction rate of vascular plants is undoubtedly much higher than indicated here.     

The ethical contours of research in crisis settings: five practical considerations for academic institutional review boards and researchers

The number of research studies in the humanitarian field is rising. It is imperative, therefore, that institutional review boards (IRBs) consider carefully the additional risks present in crisis contexts to ensure that the highest ethical standards are upheld. Ethical guidelines should represent better the specific issues inherent to research among populations grappling with armed conflict, disasters triggered by natural hazards, or health‐related emergencies. This paper seeks to describe five issues particular to humanitarian settings that IRBs should deliberate and on which they should provide recommendations to overcome associated challenges: staged reviews of protocols in acute emergencies; flexible reviews of modification requests; addressing violence and the traumatic experiences of participants; difficulties in attaining meaningful informed consent among populations dependent on aid; and ensuring reviews are knowledgeable of populations' needs. Considering these matters when reviewing protocols will yield more ethically sound research in humanitarian settings and hold researchers accountable to appropriate ethical standards.     

Humpback whale song: who sings?

While on their winter breeding grounds, male humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) produce long sequences of structured vocalizations called song, whose function within the mating system is still unresolved. Here we ask which males sing. Is it only those sexually mature, as typifies songbirds and some lekking ungulates in which vocalizations during the rut are restricted to mature males? Or do immature males join in the chorus? Using an underwater videogrammetric technique, we measured the body lengths of 87 humpback singers in the Hawaiian winter grounds. Applying length and sexual maturity relationships for North Pacific humpbacks as determined by biologists aboard twentieth century Japanese whaling vessels, we found that singer lengths ranged from 10.7 to 13.6 m, with 15 % of lengths indicative of probable sexual immaturity (length?<?11.3 m, p [maturity]?<?0.5). We interpret this broad participation of males as a lekking aggregation and the asynchronous singing chorus as an instance of by-product mutualism. The participation of many singers yields a heightened signal level that may attract more females to the singing area. Sexually mature males can benefit through access to more females. Immature males may gain deferred benefits through increased opportunities to learn and practice the social, behavioral, and acoustical skills and conventions of the winter grounds that they can apply usefully in later years.     

A female preference for experienced males in the almond moth, Cadra cautella

Male mating status can affect female reproductive output if male ejaculate investment declines over consecutive matings. Accordingly, females are predicted to mate preferentially with virgin males. In mildly polyandrous lepidopterans, female fitness is less affected by reduced male investment than in more polyandrous species, and so the predictions for female mating preferences are less clear. We examined female mating preferences in the mildly polyandrous almond moth, Cadra cautella, in which ejaculate size does not affect female reproductive output. First, we allowed females to mate with virgin or once-mated males, in which the males were presented individually or simultaneously. We recorded the latency to mating and, in the case of the simultaneously presented trials, the identity of the successful, copulating male. We found that females mated more frequently with mated males (when simultaneously presented with both males), yet females did not differ in the time taken to initiate copulation with any male. We further examined if this mated male advantage was due to differential mate detection or locomotory behaviour of the male treatments. We tested the ability of virgin and mated males to locate a receptive female within a wind tunnel using long-distance pheromone cues and recorded their activity budget. We found no difference in the ability of mated or virgin males to locate or approach a receptive female, or in their activity levels. These data suggest a female preference for mated males in this species, a preference that may minimise other potential costs of mating.     

Wildlife contact analysis: emerging methods, questions, and challenges

Recent technological advances, such as proximity loggers, allow researchers to collect complete interaction histories, day and night, among sampled individuals over several months to years. Social network analyses are an obvious approach to analyzing interaction data because of their flexibility for fitting many different social structures as well as the ability to assess both direct contacts and indirect associations via intermediaries. For many network properties, however, it is not clear whether estimates based upon a sample of the network are reflective of the entire network. In wildlife applications, networks may be poorly sampled and boundary effects will be common. We present an alternative approach that utilizes a hierarchical modeling framework to assess the individual, dyadic, and environmental factors contributing to variation in the interaction rates and allows us to estimate the underlying process variation in each. In a disease control context, this approach will allow managers to focus efforts on those types of individuals and environments that contribute the most toward super-spreading events. We account for the sampling distribution of proximity loggers and the non-independence of contacts among groups by only using contact data within a group during days when the group membership of proximity loggers was known. This allows us to separate the two mechanisms responsible for a pair not contacting one another: they were not in the same group or they were in the same group but did not come within the specified contact distance. We illustrate our approach with an example dataset of female elk from northwestern Wyoming and conclude with a number of important future research directions.     

A determination of the prevalence of gender-based violence among conflict-affected populations in East Timor

The Reproductive Health Response in Conflict (RHRC) Consortium designed a standardised questionnaire to measure gender-based violence (GBV) prevalence in conflict-affected settings. A preliminary field test was undertaken July-August 2002 in one urban and one rural district in East Timor to assess the prevalence of GBV among women 18-49 years of age during and after conflict. The field test used a cross-sectional survey design with a two-stage random selection process. During the year preceding East Timor's 1999 crisis, 23.8 per cent of respondents reported physical assault by an intimate partner; this rate was not significantly different in the year preceding the survey (24.8 per cent). Assault by perpetrators outside the family declined significantly from 24.2 per cent during the crisis to 5.8 per cent post-crisis for physical assault (p<.001) and 22.7 per cent during the crisis to 9.7 per cent post-crisis for sexual assault (p=0.046). The field test stimulated and informed additional research in East Timor, and the complementary findings of these research initiatives continue to be used to develop local policies and programming to prevent and address GBV.