scholarly journals People, animals, and island encounters: A pig’s history of the Pacific

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jordan Sand
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Genetic Factors ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Domesticated Animals ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
Pig Husbandry

Abstract This essay traces the diffusion of pigs and the introduction of new practices of pig husbandry in East Asia and the Pacific, with particular attention to the cases of Hawaii, Okinawa, and Japan. Countering the trend in animal history to emphasize environmental and genetic factors, it demonstrates that discourses of property, sovereignty, freedom, and slavery, brought to the region with modern imperialism, played a decisive role in shaping relationships between people and domesticated animals. The essay concludes that global diffusion of capitalist forms of animal husbandry depended on a process of disembedding animals from earlier social roles. This process took different forms in different places. It was in part ecological and in part economic, but must be understood first in the context of the movement of political ideas.

scholarly journals Pathogen emergence in changing ecosystems: RAD-seq reveals long evolutionary history of Phellinus noxius in east Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga Kozhar ◽  
Mee-Sook Kim ◽  
Jorge Ibarra Caballero ◽  
Ned Klopfenstein ◽  
Phil Cannon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Genetic Relationships ◽  
Supervised Machine Learning ◽  
Sequencing Data ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Recent Emergence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Phellinus Noxius

Emerging pathogens have been increasing exponentially over the last century. The knowledge on whether these organisms are native to ecosystems or have been recently introduced is often of great importance. Understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes promoting emergence can help to control their spread and forecast epidemics. Using restriction site-associated DNA sequencing data, we studied genetic relationships, pathways of spread, and evolutionary history of Phellinus noxius, an emerging root-rotting fungus of unknown origin, in eastern Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. We analyzed patterns of genetic variation using Bayesian inference, maximum likelihood phylogeny, populations splits and mixtures measuring correlations in allele frequencies and genetic drift, and finally applied coalescent based theory using approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) with supervised machine learning. Population structure analyses revealed five genetic groups with signatures of complex recent and ancient migration histories. The most probable scenario of ancient pathogen spread is movement from west to east: from Malaysia to the Pacific Islands, with subsequent spread to Taiwan and Australia. Furthermore, ABC analyses indicate that P. noxius spread occurred thousands of generations ago, contradicting previous assumptions that it was recently introduced in multiple areas. Our results suggest that recent emergence of P. noxius in east Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands is likely driven by anthropogenic and natural disturbances, including deforestation, land-use change, severe weather events, and introduction of exotic plants. This study provides a novel example of utilization of genome wide allele frequency data to unravel dynamics of pathogen emergence under conditions of changing ecosystems.

A History of East Asia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Holcombe
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
History Of

The Double Burden of Malnutrition in East Asia and the Pacific

10.1596/26102 ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Shrimpton ◽  
Nkosinathi Vusizihlobo Mbuya ◽  
Anne Marie Provo
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Double Burden ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Double Burden Of Malnutrition

A Short history of the post-graduate surgical training in Fiji - where to from here?

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jitoko Kelepi Cama ◽  
Sonal Singh Nagra
Keyword(s):  
Surgical Training ◽  
Training Programme ◽  
Post Graduate ◽  
School Of Medicine ◽  
Postgraduate Training Programme ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
National University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Training Of Surgeons ◽  
Pacific Island Nations

Post-graduate surgical training at the Fiji National University (FNU), previously known as the Fiji School of Medicine) has recently been updated by incorporating elements from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) training curriculum. The revised curriculum maintains strong contextual relevance to the needs and pathologies of the Pacific Island nations.  This paper outlines why the FNU surgical postgraduate training programme should be applauded as a successful programme in the training of surgeons for the region.

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