Chromatic leucism in the flap shell turtle, Lissemys punctata from Bangladesh

The spotted flap shell turtle, Lissemys punctata (Bonnaterre, 1789) has a distribution in Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan. In Bangladesh, this species is widely distributed throughout the freshwater wetlands and the low-lying floodplains, coastal islands, and hill districts. This species is listed in CITES (Appendix II) and protected by Bangladesh Wildlife Conservation & Security Act 2012 (Schedule II), where commercial trade is strictly prohibited. Lissemys punctata has an oval and domed carapace with olive-green colour spotted by dark yellow blotches. The head is also olive green often with yellow blotches, whereas the plastron is whitish or pale yellow. The colour of this species may vary depending on its habitat and defence strategy. Colour aberration in animals may occur due to a lack of melanin. Golden yellow colour aberration (chromatic leucism) is rare in animals, especially in turtles. This might be because of the absence of melanin in the outer dermis. The presence of high xanthophores and yellow pteridine pigments in the skin are also responsible for the golden yellow colour aberration.

Raupo Whare (c1860) and the Tale of the Missing Dog Box

In A History of New Zealand Architecture, Peter Shaw describes the European settlers of the 1840s encountering an architecturally-impoverished landscape. Skilled carpenters were still an uncommon migrant at that time and while some of the wealthier settlers brought prefabricated houses with them, for many their first accommodation in New Zealand were deserted shoreline whare. Moreover, these newest of New Zealanders were without familiar building materials and, as Shaw writes, they "emulated the style and construction methods of Maori dwellings and adapted them according to European ideas of hygiene and comfort." This explanation is characteristically ethnocentric in its confident view that European society, at that time, was architecturally superior. Sinclair has stated that it was colonial contact (principally commercial trade) which drew Māori from their sanitary patterns found in pā occupation. The grand view here is that the settlers adopted an indigenous typology to suit their own physical needs but that they maintained certain environmental and occupancy standards from "home." That is, the settlers would have preferred to have built in the model of the places they had just left but were forced, by the limits of land and labour, to adopt local materials and knowledge, and particularly those of Māori.

How China's Wildlife Trade Legislation Permits Commercial Trade in Protected Wild Animal Species

Wildlife trade policies in China and elsewhere have come under increased scrutiny following suggestions that the emergence of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 may have been linked to trade in wild animals. The breeding of and trade in most terrestrial wild animal species for consumption as food were prohibited in China in February 2020, but trade for non-food purposes such as ornamental items or traditional medicine continues to be covered by provisions in the Wildlife Protection Law (WPL). While a superficial reading of the WPL could lead to the conclusion that commercial trade in nationally protected species is generally prohibited, in practice key language is interpreted to permit commercial trade in the parts and derivatives of protected wild animal species, including those subject to the most stringent protection within China and internationally, such as leopards and pangolins.

To Trade or Not to Trade? Using Bayesian Belief Networks to Assess How to Manage Commercial Wildlife Trade in a Complex World

International commercial trade in wildlife, whether legal or illegal, is one of the greatest threats to multiple species of wildlife today. Opinions on how to address it are deeply divided across the conservation community. Approaches fall into two broad categories: making the trade illegal to protect against any form of commercial trade or allowing some or all of the trade to be legal and seeking to manage it through sustainable trade. The conservation community is often deeply polarized on which is the better option. We posit that a way to choose between these options is by considering species-specific attributes of biological productivity, management context, and demand. We develop a conceptual framework to assess which option is more likely to result in successful conservation of a species. We show how to construct a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) to model how these attributes (1) interact to affect the sustainability of the species’ population and (2) vary under different trade management regimes. This approach can support scientifically based decision-making, by predicting the likely sustainability outcome for a population of a species under different trade management regimes, given its particular characteristics and context. The BBN allows identification of key points at which conservation interventions could change the potential outcome. It also provides the opportunity to explore how different assumptions about how humans might respond to different trade regimes affects outcomes. We illustrate these ideas by using the BBN for a hypothetical terrestrial mammal species population and discuss how the BBN can be extended for species with different characteristics, for example, those that can be stockpiled or when there are multiple products. This approach has the potential to help the conservation community to assess the most appropriate regime for managing wildlife trade in a transparent, open, and scientifically based way.

Mobility and the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex During the Early First Millennium

This chapter explores how mobility and politics were intertwined in the Syro-Anatolian Culture Complex (SACC). Noting that politics and movement are always related, an insight drawn from the “new mobilities paradigm” in sociology and referred to here as kinopolitics, this chapter explores this dynamic in three places. The first is the troubling presence of Phoenician inscriptions and objects in SACC that have long been difficult to interpret historically. Here it is argued that mobile Phoenician speakers must have been part of the Syro-Anatolian sociopolitical landscape, likely involved in state-sponsored commercial trade. The second is one of SACC’s most famous cultural products, the finely worked ivories that were so sought after during the Iron Age. In this case, ivory and its producers were both highly mobile across SACC. The third, the engraved stone reliefs that lined the walls of monumental buildings, is the most counterintuitive. Despite appearances, evidence from nearly all cases where such reliefs have been found indicates that they were constantly being reused in new constructions, indicating that such movement was a cultural significant practice.

Manta Ray Tourism

Manta rays are flagship species for marine conservation because of a number of threats including anthropogenic, overfishing, plastics (microplastics), over tourism, commercial trade (gills for medicine), and chaotic shipping lines where they often injured or killed. Because of these reasons, manta ray face risk of extinction and listed on the Red List of IUCN. A number of studies present the value of this fish estimated millions of dollars per year from tourism which show much greater valuable alive than dead. Responsible manta ray tourism encourages stakeholders to protect the species by generating incentives from tourism while develop conservations initiatives to protect the species. Desk study on current literatures were reviewed to identify the role of stakeholders in supporting the sustainable management of manta ray tourism. This chapter explored the operations of manta ray tourism in Indonesia as the study areas. In summary, to reach the positive contributions from manta ray tourism, there is an important role of co-management between stakeholders to ensure the sustainable operations and conservation of the ecology, economy, and socio-culture.

Linguocognitive Aspects of the Dynamic of Verbalisation the Conceptial Space „Trade“

The article explores systemic lingual and speech facts objectifying trade, which are fixated in lexicographical sources. Comprehensible, exemplary, and values-based characteristics of trade are established. This establishment allows the discussion of the fact that in the commonplace, economic consciousness of a native speaker of the Russian language and Russian linguaculture, the following notional components of the logico-rational conceptualization of trade are present (evidently or not evidently): 1) entrepreneurship; 2) buying-selling, circulation of products; 3) obtainment of advantages. Figuratively-evaluative components of the conceptualization characterize trade as an activity which entails betrayal and deception, unfair profits and “lucre” (barysh), which allow discussion of the presence of (evidently or not evidently) the following notional components of the logico-rational conceptualization of trade in the commonplace economic consciousness of a native speaker of Russian and linguaculture: 1) entrepreneurship; 2) buying-selling, circulation of products; 3) obtainment of profits.Values-based components are presented in an aphorismic representation, mutually excluding normative judgements related to trade links and theft, truthfulness and lies in a product’s commercial, business and familial ties in bargaining, necessity of obtaining a profit while at the same time retaining moral values. The defining characteristic of the perception of a bargain situation is the presence of mutually exclusive norms of behavior during the buying and selling of products: deceiving is forbidden and allowed, familial ties are taken into account and ignored, there is and there is not a link between trade and theft. These contradictions can be explained with famous cultural dominations in Russian lingual consciousness: the necessity of living according to the laws of higher justice and the resulting maximalism in the evaluation of the reality of life, and thus negative evaluation of the material enrichment of individuals. Logico-rational conceptualizations of trade in lingual consciousness identify the following peculiar qualities: 1) thorough linguocognitive elaboration on the name of the salesperson in the form of several nicknames, given to the salesperson depending on the produced and realized product, 2) conceptual (and associative) connections between the lexeme to sell and resell, buy and bribe, 3) unification of semantic characteristics in the words “producer” and “seller of product” in one nomination, which negates the presence of commercial, trade activity as mediation, 4) negative evaluation of aspiration to unfair advantages (barysh) and 5) presence of mutually exclusive behavior norms during bargaining.

ON THE SUBJECTS OF COMMERCIAL (TRADE) LAW

The article examines the system of subjects of commercial (trade) law, as well as the criteria for their classification. In the doctrine of commercial (commercial) law, the problem of distinguishing its subjects and their legal features has remained controversial for many years. The author pays special attention to the concept and legal characterization of such ambiguously determined trading participants as resellers and trade facilitators. The author considers the features of the legal status of participants in trade relations, which allow them to be attributed to a certain category of subjects of commercial law.The article also examines the problems of changing the subject composition of trade relations in the context of the development of digital technologies and electronic commerce. In this regard, the norms of legislation and the positions of lawyers are analyzed with respect to new categories of participants in trade relations, the activity of which has become widespread in the process of developing Internet commerce — aggregators, as well as subjects of the information infrastructure of trade — the so-called information intermediaries and other persons providing commercial services in the global network.

Ayahuasca Ethno-tourism and its Impact on the Indigenous Shuar Community (Ecuador) and Western Participants

An indigenous Shuar community in Ecuador have been hosting tourists seeking retreats that feature traditional medicinal plants such as ayahuasca and tobacco. The community has provided individual ceremonies with the plants, or more complex rites such as Natemamu. Natemamu is a rite that is comprised of repetitive ceremonies lasting ten to twelve days, which involves drinking large quantities of Ayahuasca. The author primarily focuses on: 1) the commodification of the Shuar Natemamu rite as a product that is offered on the global market; and 2) the impacts of this commercial trade on the hosts and visitors. This article is based on data collected by means of participant observation, interviews, and audio-visual documentations. The findings imply that the introduction of western tourists to the Shuar community and its rites has contributed to processual changes to the rite and to ideational and material changes on both sides. Furthermore, the findings suggest that while the tourists experienced more ideational changes, the impact on Shuars was more material. This seems to be in accordance with the respective expectations of the encounter of both groups.