Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-212
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Veech
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Variables ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Structure Characterization ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Ecological Communities ◽  
Individual Organism ◽  
Wildlife Ecology ◽  
Habitat Analysis ◽  
Survival And Reproduction ◽  
The Individual

Because habitat is so crucial to the survival and reproduction of individual organisms and persistence of populations, it has long been studied by wildlife ecologists. However, the modern concept of habitat originated with ecologists before the field and practice of wildlife ecology arose. The fields of ecology and wildlife ecology have developed along separate historical paths, but, given that research in each field continues to involve the study of species–habitat relationships, there is common ground for practitioners and students in both fields to better engage with one another. Such collaboration could involve a shared recognition that habitat largely determines a species spatial distribution in nature. Through a behavioral process of dispersal, settlement, and establishment, an individual organism finds appropriate habitat by searching and responding to environmental cues. These cues may primarily be characteristics of the habitat such as vegetation structure. Characterization or statistical analysis of habitat is an obvious and important component of studying the habitat requirements of a species. It is recommended that multiple logistic regression will often be the most appropriate method for characterizing habitat. Of most importance, a habitat analysis should recognize that the habitat of a species involves an integrated set of environmental variables that synergistically influence the survival and reproduction of the individual and existence of the species. The study of habitat can help us learn more about the autecology of the focal species, its role in ecological communities, and proper strategies for its preservation.

Habitat Ecology and Analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Veech
Keyword(s):  
Function Analysis ◽  
Habitat Preferences ◽  
Habitat Destruction ◽  
Habitat Requirements ◽  
Multivariate Techniques ◽  
Occupancy Modelling ◽  
Wildlife Ecology ◽  
Biodiversity Crisis ◽  
Habitat Analysis ◽  
Survival And Reproduction

Habitat is crucial to the survival and reproduction of individual organisms as well as persistence of populations. As such, species-habitat relationships have long been studied, particularly in the field of wildlife ecology and to a lesser extent in the more encompassing discipline of ecology. The habitat requirements of a species largely determine its spatial distribution and abundance in nature. One way to recognize and appreciate the over-riding importance of habitat is to consider that a young organism must find and settle into the appropriate type of habitat as one of the first challenges of life. This process can be cast in a probabilistic framework and used to better understand the mechanisms behind habitat preferences and selection. There are at least six distinctly different statistical approaches to conducting a habitat analysis – that is, identifying and quantifying the environmental variables that a species most strongly associates with. These are (1) comparison among group means (e.g., ANOVA), (2) multiple linear regression, (3) multiple logistic regression, (4) classification and regression trees, (5) multivariate techniques (Principal Components Analysis and Discriminant Function Analysis), and (6) occupancy modelling. Each of these is lucidly explained and demonstrated by application to a hypothetical dataset. The strengths and weaknesses of each method are discussed. Given the ongoing biodiversity crisis largely caused by habitat destruction, there is a crucial and general need to better characterize and understand the habitat requirements of many different species, particularly those that are threatened and endangered.

THEORY AND VOCATION OF THE POLICE IN MODERN STATE STUDIES: INTERPRETATION OF M. FОUCAULT

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-48
Author(s):  
Oleh Turenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Modern Concept ◽  
Practical Implementation ◽  
Regulatory Body ◽  
Continuous Control ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Theoretical Substantiation ◽  
The Individual

The Foucault’s interpretation of the police, its theoretical substantiation, the range of powers and managerial tasks in modernist discourses. The French philosopher emphasized it should the modern concept of “police” does not coincide with its original theories of modern times. The doctrines of modern political scientists idealized the vocation of the police and identified it with the entire government, providing it with universal means of implementing the state interest. Considering the police from the perspective of “history of thought” Foucault notes that it is the unlimited nature of police functions gave the modern government to approve a disciplinary society, a new form of government - bio-power. This form of power totally controlled the individual, “took care of him” at all levels of biological life and, above all, the depths of consciousness - artificially created his authenticity. At the same time, in the theories of political scientists, the police received the status of a self-regulatory body, whose activities were not strictly controlled by state laws. In this case, the police, in the imaginary sense, is the living embodiment of state interest, morality and integrity, the formative and corrective body of state power. In order to form a disciplined and productive life, the police must direct individuals to regulation, to their temporal and hierarchical repetition. The a priori qualities of the police and its all-encompassing powers form the basis for the assertion of the idea of a “police state” and its radical form of panopticon. It is thanks to the idea of panopticon, its practical implementation by the police in modern society - the formation of disciplinary practice of continuous control in the social institutions of modernism.

Böckenförde on the Relationship Between Theology, Law, and Political Theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 238-247
Author(s):  
Mirjam Künkler ◽  
Tine Stein
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
State Law ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Constitutional State ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Legal Concepts

Part III comprises four articles dealing with the relation between theology, law, and political theory. Throughout all of these, Böckenförde clearly distinguishes between the demands on the individual that arise from religion, positive state law, and politics respectively. He also points out that religious legal concepts and state law need not be irreconcilably opposed to each other—there is the possibility of reconciliation between the truth-claims of revealed religion and the positivity of modern state law, as long as religious claims do not claim to be universally binding. Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church and the democratic constitutional state share common ground in the recognition of the freedom of the individual. The chapters reflect Böckenförde’s personal belief and attitude, expressed in the motto ...

Other Techniques Related to Habitat Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Veech
Keyword(s):  
Habitat Suitability ◽  
Environmental Variables ◽  
Resource Selection ◽  
Compositional Data ◽  
Initial Step ◽  
Compositional Data Analysis ◽  
Habitat Suitability Modeling ◽  
Species Response ◽  
Habitat Analysis ◽  
Active Choice

Habitat analysis is strictly defined as a statistical examination to identify the environmental variables that a species associates with, wherein association is taken as some form of correspondence between a species response variable (e.g., presence–absence or abundance) and the environmental variables. There are other statistical techniques and empirical goals that extend this basic framework. These techniques often rely on a habitat analysis having been conducted as an initial step. Resource selection functions quantify an individual’s and a species’ use of a resource based upon the properties of the resource. Resource is broadly defined and can include particular types of habitat. Selectivity and preference indices are used to assess an individual’s preference and active choice of different resource types. Compositional data analysis is a statistical method for examining the composition of an individual’s territory or home range with regard to different habitat types that may be represented. Habitat suitability modeling and species distribution modeling are closely related techniques designed to map the spatial distribution of a species’ habitat and sometimes the species itself based upon its habitat requirements and other factors.

Units and levels of selection

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Kin Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Levels Of Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Transitions ◽  
Individual Organism ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Hierarchical Levels ◽  
The Individual

In a standard Darwinian explanation, natural selection takes place at the level of the individual organism, i.e. some organisms enjoy a survival or reproduction advantage over others, which results in evolutionary change. In principle however, natural selection could operate at other hierarchical levels too, above and below that of the organism, for example the level of genes, cells, groups, colonies or even whole species. This possibility gives rise to the ‘levels of selection’ question in evolutionary biology. Group and colony-level selection have been proposed, originally by Darwin, as a means by which altruism can evolve. (In biology, ‘altruism’ refers to behaviour which entails a fitness cost to the individual so behaving, but benefits others.) Though this idea is still alive today, many theorists regard kin selection as a superior explanation for the existence of altruism. Kin selection arises from the fact that relatives share genes, so if an organism behaves altruistically towards its relatives, there is a greater than random chance that the beneficiary of the altruistic action will itself be an altruist. Kin selection is closely bound up with the ‘gene’s eye view’ of evolution, which holds that genes, not organisms, are the true beneficiaries of the evolutionary process. The gene’s eye approach to evolution, though heuristically valuable, does not in itself resolve the levels of selection question, because selection processes that occur at many hierarchical levels can all be seen from a gene’s eye viewpoint. In recent years, the levels of selection discussion has been re-invigorated, and subtly transformed, by the important new work on the ‘major evolutionary transitions’. These transitions occur when a number of free-living biological units, originally capable of surviving and reproducing alone, become integrated into a larger whole, giving rise to a new biological unit at a higher level of organization. Evolutionary transitions are intimately bound up with the levels of selection issue, because during a transition the potential exists for selection to operate simultaneously at two different hierarchical levels.

The place of 'genesis' in the classification of soils

Soil Research ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
GG Beckmann
Keyword(s):  
Complex Structure ◽  
Soil Layer ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Vertical Column ◽  
Individual Organism ◽  
Physical Chemical ◽  
Natural Objects ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Hand Specimen

The purpose of classification is to indicate relationships and differences between objects and to establish groups at various levels of generalization; i.e. to produce simplified models based on experience. In soils the object to be classified is often the soil profile, which may be considered to be analogous to the hand specimen in geology and to the individual organism in biology. For purposes of discussion a profile is considered to be a vertical column, up to 20 cm square, and extending to c. 2 m from the surface, to rock or to some distinct soil layer underlying the profile, across which physical, chemical and mineralogical variations are small. There is no conceptual continuum of soil profiles, even though there is a physical continuum across the surface of the earth. Rather there are a number of common forms each of which may be represented by a 'central concept' with intergrades between them. Such a central concept can be recognized at each level of a hierarchy. Soils are natural objects with a complex structure and history, as are organisms, rock specimens and even landforms. They should be considered in the same way as the other natural objects when a classification is being constructed. Their 'history', as conceived at present, should be involved in classification, even though major emphasis is placed on physical, chemical and mineralogical properties. To illustrate these ideas, the Australian Great Soil Groups are re-examined and suggestions are made about possible subgroups.

scholarly journals Molecular Politics, Wearables, and the Aretaic Shift in Biopolitical Governance

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 71-96
Author(s):  
Peter Lindner
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
The Body ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Body

Since the publication of Nikolas Rose’s ‘The Politics of Life Itself’ (2001) there has been vivid discussion about how biopolitical governance has changed over the last decades. This article uses what Rose terms ‘molecular politics’, a new socio-technical grip on the human body, as a contrasting background to ask anew his question ‘What, then, of biopolitics today?’ – albeit focusing not on advances in genetics, microbiology, and pharmaceutics, as he does, but on the rapid proliferation of wearables and other sensor-software gadgets. In both cases, new technologies providing information about the individual body are the common ground for governance and optimization, yet for the latter, the target is habits of moving, eating and drinking, sleeping, working and relaxing. The resulting profound differences are carved out along four lines: ‘somatic identities’ and a modified understanding of the body; the role of ‘expert knowledge’ compared to that of networks of peers and self-experimentation; the ‘types of intervention’ by which new technologies become effective in our everyday life; and the ‘post-discipline character’ of molecular biopolitics. It is argued that, taken together, these differences indicate a remarkable shift which could be termed aretaic: its focus is not ‘life itself’ but ‘life as it is lived’, and its modality are new everyday socio-technical entanglements and their more-than-human rationalities of (self-)governance.

scholarly journals Stress and the dynamic genome: Steroids, epigenetics, and the transposome

2014 ◽  
Vol 112 (22) ◽  
pp. 6828-6833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Hunter ◽  
Khatuna Gagnidze ◽  
Bruce S. McEwen ◽  
Donald W. Pfaff
Keyword(s):  
Brain Function ◽  
Acute Stress ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Epigenetic Mechanism ◽  
Epigenetic Mechanisms ◽  
Individual Organism ◽  
Genomic Plasticity ◽  
Genomic Stress ◽  
Dynamic Genome ◽  
The Individual

Stress plays a substantial role in shaping behavior and brain function, often with lasting effects. How these lasting effects occur in the context of a fixed postmitotic neuronal genome has been an enduring question for the field. Synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis have provided some of the answers to this question, and more recently epigenetic mechanisms have come to the fore. The exploration of epigenetic mechanisms recently led us to discover that a single acute stress can regulate the expression of retrotransposons in the rat hippocampus via an epigenetic mechanism. We propose that this response may represent a genomic stress response aimed at maintaining genomic and transcriptional stability in vulnerable brain regions such as the hippocampus. This finding and those of other researchers have made clear that retrotransposons and the genomic plasticity they permit play a significant role in brain function during stress and disease. These observations also raise the possibility that the transposome might have adaptive functions at the level of both evolution and the individual organism.

General Discussion

1952 ◽  
Vol 139 (895) ◽  
pp. 202-207 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Genetic Constitution ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Predominant Role ◽  
Individual Organism ◽  
Favourable Environment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Associated Species ◽  
Symbiotic Organisms

The first consideration which arises in any discussion of symbiosis is the connotation to be attached to the term. In what sense, if any, can the symbiotic organisms be regarded as constituting a unity? The ‘struggle for existence’ presupposes antagonism between organisms whether or no they belong to the same or diverse a species. On the other hand, the question remains whether associated species tend to provide for each other a favourable environment. The analysis of the relations between organisms has been dominated by the notion of ‘competition’ or ‘struggle’ and the converse notion of ‘co-operation’ has in consequence been disregarded. It should be remembered that even with regard to the unitary organism the notion of ‘struggle’ between organs has been seriously advocated. The data of ecology serve as a challenge to this view of the predominant role of ‘struggle’. It will be generally accepted that the individual organism represents a true unity, and the persistence of the species bears witness to this fact. In this case the unity of the organism and the transmission of this unity from generation to generation is achieved by a genetic mechanism; nevertheless, the uniformity of genetic constitution throughout the cells of a single individual permits of differentiation of the cells into tissues and organs with diverse physiological functions displaying a ‘division of labour’ between the various organs. The unity of the organism expressed and recognized in the persistence of form within the species thus embraces a diversity of functioning within the constituent parts; and thus the unity may be regarded as a ‘functional unity’ or ‘functional field’. Each organ by its activity provides factors essential for the activity of other organs. The recent advances in the study of hormones as regulating factors in development and coordination is only one aspect of this functional unity.

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