Post-hibernation behavior of a population of garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis)

1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith E. Bramble ◽  
Owen J. Sexton

AbstractThe post-hibernation breeding activities of a small population of the common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) were followed in the vicinity of their hibernaculum or den in St. Louis Co., Missouri, USA during the springs of 1981-85, inclusive. Individual males could emerge as early as mid-February and remain at the den and its immediate vicinity for three or more weeks. Each day, after elevating their body temperatures, males patrolled the ground surface within 2-3 m of the den entrance. During patrolling activities, males investigated each other at frequent intervals and often returned to re-enter the den briefly. Upon partial re-emergence, one or more males would assume a position such that the head and anterior portion of the body were elevated. This "blocking" activity may be a behavioral mechanism that controls access to the den by competing males and egress by females. Numerous males simultaneously court a single female. The social organization of garter snakes is compared to that typified by lek species and several similarities are noted.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395172093393
Author(s):  
Mickey Vallee

The COVID-19 pandemic redefines how we think about the body, physiologically and socially. But what does it mean to have and to be a body in the COVID-19 pandemic? The COVID-19 pandemic offers data scholars the unique opportunity, and perhaps obligation, to revisit and reinvent the fundamental concepts of our mediated experiences. The article critiques the data double, a longstanding concept in critical data and media studies, as incompatible with the current public health and social distancing imperative. The data double, instead, is now the presupposition of a new data entity, which will emerge out of a current data shimmer: a long-sustaining transition that blurs the older boundaries of bodies and the social, and establishes new ethical boundaries around the (in)activity and (im)mobility of doing nothing to do something. The data double faces a unique dynamic in the COVID-19 pandemic between boredom and exhaustion. Following the currently simple rule to stay home presents data scholars the opportunity to revisit the meaning of data as something given, a shimmering embodied relationship with data that contributes to the common good in a global health crisis.


1991 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 988-994 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick T. Gregory ◽  
Kari J. Nelson

Diets of garter snakes (Thamnophis) often vary in space or time in response to variations in prey abundance. We compared the diet of the common garter snake (T. sirtalis) on Vancouver Island at fish-rearing facilities (hatcheries) and at nearby natural sites where fish were present but less abundant. Snakes of all sizes fed on fish at hatcheries, but fish were rarely eaten at natural sites, where amphibians or earthworms were the major prey types. Any particular characterization of the diet of this species therefore must be site specific. Although snakes exhibited intersite variation in diet, there was no evidence of temporal variation in diet at any site. The proportion of snakes with food in their stomachs varied among sites (perhaps indicating differences in frequency of feeding among sites) and was correlated with mean relative body mass of snakes. This suggests that some sites are more productive than others for snakes, but rigorous tests of whether snake populations are food-limited have not been done.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Bonomo

Among the common definitions of 1968, the most telling is that of a collective presa della parola (the capture of speech, or the act of starting to speak). Students, workers, women and ‘ordinary’ people began to speak out and speak for themselves, refusing the established systems of representation and delegation in the name of participation and direct democracy. In Italy, the development of oral history owed much to the participatory and democratising ethos of 1968, and oral history has long been viewed as a methodology enabling a collective presa della parola. Exploring the body of historical works on the Italian 1968, this article looks at the contribution oral history has made to a better understanding of the student revolt and the social movements in the late 1960s and 1970s. Attention is directed to the diversity of ways in which oral sources are used in historical research, to their potential and limits for studying past events, experience, subjectivity and memory, and to some key theoretical and methodological issues raised by their use.


Author(s):  
Richard Zhang ◽  
Patricia M. Gray

In evolutionary biology, predator-prey species pairs can be observed participating in evolutionary arms races between adaptations and counter-adaptations. For example, as a prey becomes more adept at avoiding capture, its predator becomes a more adept hunter. The rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa) produces a toxin that protects it from virtually all predators, except one. That one predator is the common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis), which has evolved resistance to this toxin. This predator-prey pair is seemingly engaged in a perpetual battle for higher toxicity and better resistance. While both adaptations come with costs, the coexistence of newt and garter snake imposes reciprocal selective pressure that drives this arms race.


Author(s):  
Ada CRUZ TIENDA

Pelos (2016), del colectivo Microlocas, es un libro de microrrelatos cuyas autoras despliegan un imaginario compartido donde el vello, denominador común del conjunto, a menudo cobra vida propia, en sentido figurado o literal. Este artículo se centra en los relatos propiamente fantásticos de la obra, con el objetivo de analizar las diversas formas de distorsión imposible que experimenta el cuerpo en sus narraciones, especialmente en aquellas en que dicha distorsión no solo transgrede lo humanamente posible, sino que también pone en entredicho las convenciones sociales tradicionalmente impuestas a una parte del cuerpo de naturaleza tan cambiante como es el pelo.  Abstract: Pelos (2016), by Microlocas collective, is a book of flash fictions whose authors display a shared imaginary where hair, the common denominator of the whole, often takes on a life of its own, figuratively or literally. This article focuses on the actual fantastic stories of the collection, with the aim of analyzing the various forms of impossible distortion that the body experiences in its narratives, especially those in which such alteration not only transgresses what is humanly possible but also questions the social conventions traditionally imposed on a part of the body with such a changeable nature as the hair.


1948 ◽  
Vol 22 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 219-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satya Narayan Singh

The writer in 1934 briefly described this nematode which was collected from the common musk-shrew at Hyderabad Deccan, creating for its reception the new genus and species Gastronodus strasseni. The following account deals with the anatomy of the worm and the close relationship which exists between the genera Gastronodus Singh and Spirocerca Railliet and Henry, 1911.This worm is of common oċcurrence in the musk-shrew, Crocidura caerulea, at Hyderabad and it forms largo nodules on the stomach walls of the host. In certain cases smaller nodules were also found in the mesentery. These are medium sized worms and when freshly extracted appear blood red in colour. The body is coiled and generally flexed at the extremities. In males and young adult females the body is of almost uniform diameter with blunt anterior and posterior ends, whereas in fully grown and gravid females the posterior 2/3 of the body is distinctly thicker than the anterior portion. The males are slender and smaller than the females. The cuticle is thick and bears fine transverse striations which are set quite close together. Irregular transverse wrinkles are also present on the body wall. The cervical papillae are located at the level of the nerve-ring and have the appearance of fine bristles.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (supplement) ◽  
pp. 46-63
Author(s):  
Vidar Thorsteinsson

The paper explores the relation of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's work to that of Deleuze and Guattari. The main focus is on Hardt and Negri's concept of ‘the common’ as developed in their most recent book Commonwealth. It is argued that the common can complement what Nicholas Thoburn terms the ‘minor’ characteristics of Deleuze's political thinking while also surpassing certain limitations posed by Hardt and Negri's own previous emphasis on ‘autonomy-in-production’. With reference to Marx's notion of real subsumption and early workerism's social-factory thesis, the discussion circles around showing how a distinction between capital and the common can provide a basis for what Alberto Toscano calls ‘antagonistic separation’ from capital in a more effective way than can the classical capital–labour distinction. To this end, it is demonstrated how the common might benefit from being understood in light of Deleuze and Guattari's conceptual apparatus, with reference primarily to the ‘body without organs’ of Anti-Oedipus. It is argued that the common as body without organs, now understood as constituting its own ‘social production’ separate from the BwO of capital, can provide a new basis for antagonistic separation from capital. Of fundamental importance is how the common potentially invents a novel regime of qualitative valorisation, distinct from capital's limitation to quantity and scarcity.


Author(s):  
Rosemary J. Jolly

The last decade has witnessed far greater attention to the social determinants of health in health research, but literary studies have yet to address, in a sustained way, how narratives addressing issues of health across postcolonial cultural divides depict the meeting – or non-meeting – of radically differing conceptualisations of wellness and disease. This chapter explores representations of illness in which Western narrators and notions of the body are juxtaposed with conceptualisations of health and wellness entirely foreign to them, embedded as the former are in assumptions about Cartesian duality and the superiority of scientific method – itself often conceived of as floating (mysteriously) free from its own processes of enculturation and their attendant limits. In this respect my work joins Volker Scheid’s, in this volume, in using the capacity of critical medical humanities to reassert the cultural specificity of what we have come to know as contemporary biomedicine, often assumed to be


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Chavoshian ◽  
Sophia Park

Along with the recent development of various theories of the body, Lacan’s body theory aligns with postmodern thinkers such as Michael Foucault and Maurice Merlot-Ponti, who consider body social not biological. Lacan emphasizes the body of the Real, the passive condition of the body in terms of formation, identity, and understanding. Then, this condition of body shapes further in the condition of bodies of women and laborers under patriarchy and capitalism, respectively. Lacan’s ‘not all’ position, which comes from the logical square, allows women to question patriarchy’s system and alternatives of sexual identities. Lacan’s approach to feminine sexuality can be applied to women’s spirituality, emphasizing multiple narratives of body and sexual identities, including gender roles. In the social discernment and analysis in the liberation theology, we can employ the capitalist discourse, which provides a tool to understand how people are manipulated by late capitalist society, not knowing it. Lacan’s theory of ‘a body without a head’ reflects the current condition of the human body, which manifests lack, yet including some possibilities for transforming society.


Author(s):  
Anne Phillips

No one wants to be treated like an object, regarded as an item of property, or put up for sale. Yet many people frame personal autonomy in terms of self-ownership, representing themselves as property owners with the right to do as they wish with their bodies. Others do not use the language of property, but are similarly insistent on the rights of free individuals to decide for themselves whether to engage in commercial transactions for sex, reproduction, or organ sales. Drawing on analyses of rape, surrogacy, and markets in human organs, this book challenges notions of freedom based on ownership of our bodies and argues against the normalization of markets in bodily services and parts. The book explores the risks associated with metaphors of property and the reasons why the commodification of the body remains problematic. The book asks what is wrong with thinking of oneself as the owner of one's body? What is wrong with making our bodies available for rent or sale? What, if anything, is the difference between markets in sex, reproduction, or human body parts, and the other markets we commonly applaud? The book contends that body markets occupy the outer edges of a continuum that is, in some way, a feature of all labor markets. But it also emphasizes that we all have bodies, and considers the implications of this otherwise banal fact for equality. Bodies remind us of shared vulnerability, alerting us to the common experience of living as embodied beings in the same world. Examining the complex issue of body exceptionalism, the book demonstrates that treating the body as property makes human equality harder to comprehend.


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