Evolution of Mutualism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Bronstein
Keyword(s):  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Conservation Priorities ◽  
Terrestrial Habitat ◽  
Biological Organization ◽  
Nitrogen And Phosphorus ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Microbe Interactions ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
Evolutionary Persistence

Mutualisms, interactions between two species that benefit both, have long captured the public imagination. Humans are undeniably attracted to the idea of cooperation in nature. For thousands of years we have been seeking explanations for its occurrence in other organisms, often imposing our own motivations and mores in an effort to explain what we see. However, the importance of mutualisms lies much deeper than simply providing material for philosophical treatises and natural history documentaries. The influence of mutualisms transcends levels of biological organization from cells to populations, communities, and ecosystems. Mutualisms were key to the origin of eukaryotic cells and perhaps to the invasion of the land. Mutualisms occur in every aquatic and terrestrial habitat; indeed, ecologists now believe that almost every species on Earth is involved directly or indirectly in one or more of these interactions. Mutualisms are crucial to the reproduction and survival of many plants and animals and to nutrient cycles in ecosystems. Moreover, the ecosystem services mutualists provide (e.g., seed dispersal, pollination, and carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles resulting from plant-microbe interactions) are leading to these interactions increasingly being considered conservation priorities, while acute risks to their ecological and evolutionary persistence are being identified. The field of evolution came very late to the study of mutualism. Charles Darwin clearly recognized that it posed an evolutionary puzzle: In The Origin of Species, he wrote, “If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.” The past 150 years have been devoted to trying to solve the challenge that Darwin posed to us.

Mutualisms and Symbioses

Ecology ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Bronstein
Keyword(s):  
Interspecific Interactions ◽  
Conservation Priorities ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
Biological Organization ◽  
Nitrogen And Phosphorus ◽  
The Public ◽  
Parasitic Fungi ◽  
Microbe Interactions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Public Imagination

Mutualisms, interactions between two species that benefit both of them, have long captured the public imagination. Humans are undeniably attracted by the idea of cooperation in nature. For thousands of years we have been seeking explanations for its occurrence in other organisms, often imposing our own motivations and mores in an effort to explain what we see. However, the importance of mutualisms lies much deeper than simply providing material for philosophical treatises and natural history documentaries. The influence of mutualisms transcends levels of biological organization from cells to populations, communities, and ecosystems. Mutualisms were key to the origin of eukaryotic cells and perhaps to the invasion of the land. Mutualisms occur in every aquatic and terrestrial habitat; indeed, ecologists now believe that almost every species on Earth is involved directly or indirectly in one or more of these interactions. Mutualisms are crucial to the reproduction and survival of many plants and animals and to nutrient cycles in ecosystems. Moreover, the ecosystem services mutualists provide (e.g., seed dispersal; pollination; carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles resulting from plant-microbe interactions) are leading these interactions increasingly to be considered conservation priorities, while acute risks to their ecological and evolutionary persistence are being identified. It is important to clarify the relationship between mutualism and symbiosis, because these concepts overlap and are often confounded. The term mutualism refers to all mutually beneficial, interspecific interactions, regardless of their specificity, intimacy, or evolutionary history. The term was first used in a biological context by Pierre-Joseph van Beneden, a Belgian zoologist, in 1873 (“There is mutual aid in many species, with services being repaid with good behaviour or in kind, and mutualism can well take its place beside commensalism” [van Beneden, 1873, “Un mot sur la vie sociale des animaux inférieurs,” Bulletin de l’Academie Royale de Belgique, series 2, 36, p. 785]). Albert Bernhard Frank and Heinrich Anton de Bary independently coined the term symbiosis a few years later in an attempt to group physiologically intimate interactions independent of their parasitic, commensal, or mutualistic outcome. Thus, some mutualisms are symbiotic (e.g., interactions between algae and fungi that form lichens), whereas others are not (e.g., plant-pollinator interactions). Conversely, some symbioses are mutualistic (e.g., lichens), whereas others are not (e.g., parasitic fungi that inhabit plant roots). It is appropriate to refer to all mutually beneficial, interspecific interactions as mutualisms, whether or not their physiological intimacy justifies referring to them as symbioses as well.

scholarly journals Demystifying the “Victimized State”

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross McGarry
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Military Institution ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Communities ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
Policy Arena

The purpose of this article is to illustrate prescient issues relating to current and ex-military communities in the United Kingdom who have featured heavily within the policy arena over the past decade in relation to several key areas of importance. It will be illustrated how this population becomes visible within the public imagination (via military losses), how discourses relating to the harms they experience are structured and articulated within political and policy domains (particularly in relation to mental health) via “state talk” (qua Sim), and what the potential social consequences are for politically rendering an unproblematized populist view of current and ex-military communities (i.e., pending crises). This argument is made with the express intention of reengaging critical recognition of the distancing of the military institution from the physical and psychological vulnerability of those who have participated in war and military environments. This is an argument returned to pertinence from the recent publication of the Chilcot Inquiry into British involvement in the Iraq war.

Bombay Before Mumbai

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Communities ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
The City

‘City of Gold’, ‘Urbs Prima in Indis’, ‘Maximum City’: no Indian metropolis has captivated the public imagination quite like Mumbai. The past decade has seen an explosion of historical writing on the city that was once Bombay. This book, featuring new essays by its finest historians, presents a rich sample of Bombay’s palimpsestic pasts. It considers the making of urban communities and spaces, the workings of power and the nationalist makeover of the colonial city. In addressing these themes, the contributors to this volume engage critically with the scholarship of a distinguished historian of this frenetic metropolis. For over five decades, Jim Masselos has brought to life with skill and empathy Bombay’s hidden histories. His books and essays have traversed an extraordinarily diverse range of subjects, from the actions of the city’s elites to the struggles of its most humble denizens. His pioneering research has opened up new perspectives and inspired those who have followed in his wake. Bombay Before Mumbai is a fitting tribute to Masselos’ enduring contribution to South Asian urban history

scholarly journals The Pasts, Presents and Futures of AIDS, Norway (1983–1996)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ketil Slagstad
Keyword(s):  
Second Phase ◽  
Positive Perception ◽  
Temporal Perspective ◽  
Medical Progress ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
History Of ◽  
Public Imagination

Summary This article explores the Norwegian AIDS epidemic from a temporal perspective. It argues that interrogating the epidemic’s tempos and rhythms provides useful tools in writing the history of an epidemic by drawing on a wide array of material from its first decade. By using various theories of temporality and chronology, this article maps out three phases of the Norwegian AIDS epidemic. In the first phase (1983–85), the emergence of the first cases of AIDS threw the positive perception of medicine’s past into question and fundamentally challenged the notion of incessant medical progress. In the second phase (1985–87), as grim epidemiological prognoses were created and the general population was increasingly targeted, panic grew across Norwegian society. In the third phase (1987–96), as it was slowly realised that the initial prognoses would not materialise, the epidemic faded from the public imagination. With the unremembering of AIDS, HIV was turned into a chronic disease. The article argues that analysing past temporalities, like past pasts and past futures, provides insights into the presents of the past.

Philip Venables and Ted Huffman, Denis & Katya, London, Southbank Centre, Purcell Room, 13–14 March 2020

Tempo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (294) ◽  
pp. 85-86
Author(s):  
George K. Haggett
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Group Memory ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Butterfly Effect ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Public Imagination

Oral history is experiencing something of a heyday in the public imagination. The past ten years have seen a proliferation of podcasts – Sarah Koenig's Serial, Brian Reed's S-Town, Jon Ronson's The Butterfly Effect – which revolve around the testimony of ordinary people. Many of their fictional counterparts, most overtly Archive 81, hinge around the very practice of documenting, archiving and interpreting oral histories. BBC radio's oral history The Century Speaks (1999) was broadcast to an audience of millions. In the same year, radio historian Susan Douglas presciently called for a return to orality: ‘a mode of communication reliant on storytelling, listening, and group memory’. Common to these cultural products is a desire to capture a zeitgeist in a peculiarly direct and interpersonal way: through the intimacy of hearing a witness's own voice, oral history media eludes writing and embraces the subjectivity of the spoken and unscripted. To listen to somebody's testimony is to foster a distinctive relationship with them and their past, to receive it in their words and in some sense relive it on their terms.

The Deification of Mary Magdalene

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Beavis
Keyword(s):  
Divine Feminine ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Sacred Feminine ◽  
Mary Magdalene ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Imagination

The past 25 years have seen an upsurge of interest in the figure of Mary Magdalene, whose image has been transformed through feminist scholarship from penitent prostitute to prominent disciple of Jesus. This article documents another, non-academic, interpretation of Mary Magdalene – the image of Mary as goddess or embodiment of the female divine. The most influential proponent of this view is Margaret Starbird, who hypothesizes that Mary was both Jesus’ wife and his divine feminine counterpart. The author suggests that feminist theologians/thealogians should (a) be aware of this popular understanding of Mary; and (b) consider what it is about Mary Magdalene as the sacred feminine/Bride of Jesus/Sophia that captures the public imagination in a way that other feminist christologies do not.

scholarly journals Astronomical exploration and the public imagination

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S260) ◽  
pp. 9-15
Author(s):  
Baruch S. Blumberg
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Light Pollution ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
200Th Anniversary ◽  
Night Sky ◽  
Public Imagination

Humans have a need to understand where they fit in the cosmos. Driven by the unlimited possibilities of human imagination the night sky has been and is one of the most powerful stimulators of curiosity. In pre-modern times, farmers, pastoralists, travelers, even city dwellers unhampered by light pollution, had many opportunities to observe and wonder on the mysteries of the starry night. In this, the International Year of Astronomy marking the 400th anniversary of Galileo's telescopic observations (that is also the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin) there are many explorations using the advanced and expensive instruments that society provides for satisfying the public curiosity and, of course, that of the astronomers trained to ask and answer the questions. However, it is a truism that scientific answers always raise new questions that could not have been asked raised prior to the preceding answers. The more we know the more we know about what we do not know; the task of scientific inquiry, or, for that matter, inquiry in general, is endless.

Introduction to Cell Membranes at Molecular Resolution

1978 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-502
Author(s):  
R.J. Barrnett
Keyword(s):  
Cell Membranes ◽  
International Federation ◽  
Mountain Range ◽  
Cellular Membranes ◽  
Short History ◽  
Biological Organization ◽  
Macromolecular Assemblies ◽  
The Past

This subject, is like observing the panorama of a mountain range, magnificent towering peaks, but it doesn't take much duration of observation to recognize that they are still in the process of formation. The mountains consist of approaches, materials and methods and the rocky substance of information has accumulated to such a degree that I find myself concentrating on the foothills in the foreground in order to keep up with the advance; the edifices behind form a wonderous, substantive background. It's a short history for such an accumulation and much of it has been moved by the members of the societies that make up this International Federation. My panel of speakers are here to provide what we hope is an interesting scientific fare, based on the fact that there is a continuum of biological organization from biochemical molecules through macromolecular assemblies and cellular membranes to the cell itself. Indeed, this fact explains the whole range of towering peaks that have emerged progressively during the past 25 years.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

The End of History Museums: What's Plan B??

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson
Keyword(s):  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
End Of History ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Plan B ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Way

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.

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