Books for Review

BookReview

Books for Review     

Territory takeover and sexually selected infanticide in tropical house wrens

Summary Tropical house wrens in lowland central Panama are, with rare exception, permanently monogamous. During a 3-year demographic study of 54–56 pairs of these brids, both males and females committed infanticide in association with takeover of breeding territories. New males and new females replaced previously identified (color-banded) parents before the termination of parental care in 13% of 328 breeding attempts. Replacement was accomplished by physical takeover in at least some if not all cases. Total nest failure at the egg, nestling, or fledgling stage occurred in 73% of the male replacements and 70% of the female replacements. Nest predation was excluded as a possible cause of nest failure. 76% of male replacements and 50% of female replacements bred in the same season. Infanticidal replacement males bred sooner than did non-infanticidal males arriving at similar stages of the nesting cycle. Contexts in which infanticide occurred included takeovers by first-year males and females of territories and mates, re-entry into the breeding population by males that had recently lost their mates, acquisition of neighboring females by bigamous males, and the elimination of one female of a bigamous male by the other. Sexually selected infanticide in these birds is promoted by a lengthy breeding season and extremely limited breeding opportunities for individuals not already part of the breeding population. Mate limitation appears to be more important than habitat or nestsite limitation in restricting new breeding opportunities once the breeding season has begun.     

Evaporation of solutes from water

A model is developed to define the evaporation rates of solutes from water. The rate equation, similar in form to the Knudsen equation, takes into consideration the effect of air and subwater turbulences on the evaporation loss. At given system conditions, the factor accounting for the air turbulence appears to be essentially constant and independent of temperature (3.5–25°C) for various organic chemicals and water. These characteristics allow one to study the rate of evaporation from water and the relative enhancement by subwater mixing for different solutes. This report shows that the volatilization loss of pure substances and solutes with low Henry's law constants is enhanced by air turbulence, not by subwater mixing. However, the loss of volatile solutes (high Henry's law constants) may be promoted both by air turbulence and by subwater mixing, in which the extent of enhancement by liquid mixing is determined primarily by the Henry's law constant. The present model provides a theoretical basis to explain these effects and others, which appear to be important for assessment of pollutant evaporative transport in the environment.     

The effective source area of 90Sr for a stream near Chernobyl, Ukraine

Remediation of streams impacted by non-point source contaminants requires an understanding of both the areas within a watershed that are contributing contamination to streams and the pathways of contaminant migration to streams. From 1998 to 2002, we studied the migration of 90Sr in the Borschi watershed, a small (8.5 km2) catchment three km south of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine. Fuel particles, distributed in a heterogeneous pattern across the watershed, are weathering and releasing 90Sr from the fuel matrix. Depletion of (90)Sr, evaluated in comparison to the immobile fission product europium-154, is occurring in the channel and wetland sediment. Channel sediments are uniformly depleted in 90Sr with depth. In wetland sediments, there is a zone of depletion in the top 10 cm and a zone of accumulation at depths from 10 to 25 cm. Estimates of 90Sr depletion are used to map the effective source area that has contributed (90)Sr loading to the main channel. The effective source area includes channel bottom sediments, a wetland in the central region of the watershed, and periodically flooded soils surrounding the wetland. The total depletion from the effective source area is estimated to be 36 +/- 7 x 10(10) Bq. Based on observations of stream flow rate and water quality in 1999-2001, the annual 90Sr removal rate from the watershed is estimated to be 1.4 +/-0.2 x 10(10) or 1.5% of the inventory per year. When extrapolated over a 15-year period following the Chernobyl accident, the last value is in reasonable agreement with the estimated depletion of the source area based on 90Sr/154Eu ratios. The 90Sr yearly leaching rate considering the whole watershed is 0.2% while the 90Sr leaching rate considering the effective source area is an order of magnitude higher. Most of the 90Sr release in the watershed has originated from an effective source area of 0.62 km2, or 7% of the watershed area.     

Evolutionary Consequences of Extinctions in Populations of a Hawaiian Honeycreeper

We report on the evolutionary change in bill size of a species of Hawaiian honeycreeper resulting from an apparent dietary shift caused by dramatic declines and extinctions of lobelioids, a historically favored nectar source. Although it now feeds mainly on the flowers of the ohia tree ( Metrosideros polymorpha ), early Hawaiian avifaunal accounts report that the i'iwi ( Vestiaria coccinea ), which has a long decurved bill, fed primarily on the flowers of Hawaiian Lobelioideae, which typically have long decurved corollas. A coevolutionary association of i'iwi bill and flower morphology has often been asserted. We test the hypothesis that the shift in the i'iwi's diet from the long corolla lobelioid flowers to ohia flowers, which lack corollas, resulted in directional selection for shorter bills. We evaluate this hypothesis by comparing the morphological characters of museum specimens from the island of Hawaii collected before 1902 with recent specimens from the Hakalau National Wildlife Refuge, Hawaii. We examine evidence of change in morphological characters using multivariate analysis and a nonparametric cubic spline technique. Results from all analyses are congruent: bill length is shorter in recent specimens.     

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A survey of light-vehicle driver education curriculum on sharing the road with heavy vehicles

IntroductionLight-vehicle driver education programs that contain content about sharing the road with heavy vehicles may be helpful in reducing future light-vehicle/heavy-vehicle interactions. However, the extent of curricula in the United States including such content is unclear.MethodResearchers developed an online survey targeted at instructors/administrators of state driver education programs to identify curricula addressing heavy vehicles and to determine perceived effectiveness.ResultsNinety-one percent of respondents indicated that the light-vehicle driver education curriculum they teach/administer included a component covering how to safely share the road with heavy vehicles (82% perceived this component to be effective).DiscussionAlthough a large proportion of these programs included a component on how to safely share the road with heavy vehicles, participants indicated there may be room for improvement.Impact on IndustryParticipants recommended that future improvements to driver education programs include updated materials and student hands-on experience with heavy vehicles.     

Predictions of evaporative loss rates of solutes in stagnant and turbulent waters in relation to rates of reference materials

A previously published kinetic model for evaporative rates of substances into air leads to the estimation of the dependence of solute transfer coefficients on turbulence to the system. The ratios of the transfer coefficients of all solutes become insensitive to air turbulence and to water mixing either when they have comparable Henry's law constants or when their Henry's law constants are sufficiently low, but not otherwise. Confirming data are presented and methods for simplifying the estimation of transfer coefficients are discussed.     

URBAN SERVICE PRICING AND LAND USE: SOME PRELIMINARY RESULTS1

ABSTRACT The use of public policy variables to control urban land use has been suggested or implied by a number of authors. This paper presents a conceptual foundation for doing so and the results of some empirical analyses based on this conceptual foundation. The method developed appears to constitute an alternative to more expensive approaches to the analysis of the relation between policy variables and land use. The empirical results tend to support earlier suggestions advanced by other researchers.