Captive husbandry and breeding of the Nguru spiny pygmy chameleon Rhampholeon acuminatus

The Nguru spiny pygmy chameleon (Rhampholeon acuminatus) is endemic to the Nguru mountains in Tanzania. It is assessed as Critically Endangered and is collected from the wild for the pet trade. An ex-situ population of this species was recently established at The Wild Planet Trust, Paignton Zoo, in the hope of learning more about the husbandry and biology of this species. We report on the captive husbandry of adults and the successful breeding, hatching and rearing of juveniles. Females carried four eggs but laid them in pairs. When eggs were incubated at 19.2-22.8 °C, hatchlings emerged roughly 180 days after laying. The hatchlings had a total length of about 30 mm and weighed 0.2-0.3 g. To our knowledge, this is the first published account of captive breeding for this species. The husbandry methods described could be used to establish populations of this and other Rhampholeon species in captivity, which in turn would reduce the demand for wild caught (Rhampholeon), as well as inform future conservation breeding programmes for this species.

Who’s who in Magelona: phylogenetic hypotheses under Magelonidae Cunningham & Ramage, 1888 (Annelida: Polychaeta)

Known as shovel head worms, members of Magelonidae comprise a group of polychaetes readily recognised by the uniquely shaped, dorso-ventrally flattened prostomium and paired ventro-laterally inserted papillated palps. The present study is the first published account of inferences of phylogenetic hypotheses within Magelonidae. Members of 72 species of Magelona and two species of Octomagelona were included, with outgroups including members of one species of Chaetopteridae and four of Spionidae. The phylogenetic inferences were performed to causally account for 176 characters distributed among 79 subjects, and produced 2,417,600 cladograms, each with 404 steps. A formal definition of Magelonidae is provided, represented by a composite phylogenetic hypothesis explaining seven synapomorphies: shovel-shaped prostomium, prostomial ridges, absence of nuchal organs, ventral insertion of palps and their papillation, presence of a burrowing organ, and unique body regionation. Octomagelona is synonymised with Magelona due to the latter being paraphyletic relative to the former. The consequence is that Magelonidae is monotypic, such that Magelona cannot be formally defined as associated with any phylogenetic hypotheses. As such, the latter name is an empirically empty placeholder, but because of the binomial name requirement mandated by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, the definition is identical to that of Magelonidae. Several key features for future descriptions are suggested: prostomial dimensions, presence/absence of prostomial horns, morphology of anterior lamellae, presence/absence of specialised chaetae, and lateral abdominal pouches. Additionally, great care must be taken to fully describe and illustrate all thoracic chaetigers in descriptions.

British Material Diplomacy in Precolonial Uganda: The Gift Exchanges of John Hanning Speke, 1860-1863

Summary In recent decades the interdisciplinary study of elite gift exchange in various geographical and temporal contexts has transformed historians’ understanding of colonial diplomacy. By combining analysis of textual, visual and material sources with theoretical approaches to material culture and gift exchange from anthropology, scholars have increasingly come to examine colonial diplomacy not only through the high-politics and text-based operations of bureaucrats in imperial metropoles, but also as a material and cultural project operating through the local and personal. This essay uses the published account of John Hanning Speke (1863) and his descriptions of ‘gift exchanges’ in present-day Uganda to understand the materiality of early British diplomacy there. As Speke was the first Briton to reach Uganda, it examines how gift exchanges impacted the logistics and outcomes of his visit. Re-examining his text this way reveals the importance of material knowledge, performance and exchange in early cross-cultural encounters in the region.

Killer Whale Orcinus orca (Linnaeus, 1758) (Mammalia: Cetartiodactyla: Delphinidae) predation on Sperm Whales Physeter macrocephalus Linnaeus, 1758 (Mammalia: Cetartiodactyla: Physeteridae) in the Gulf of Mannar, Sri Lanka

To date in Sri Lankan waters, there has been limited research on Killer Whales. These animals have been recorded almost all around the island, except in the northernmost waters and in Palk Bay. The highest observed concentrations are from the northeastern, south/southwestern and northwestern coastal waters of Sri Lanka. These have come from both opportunistic observations and dedicated scientific surveys. Seasonal trends in sightings in some locations suggest fairly consistent occupancy. Transient Killer Whales have been documented attacking/killing Sperm Whales from many geographic locations around the world. To date, there is only one published account of Killer Whales feeding in Sri Lankan waters. Our paper presents, for the first time, field observations of Killer Whales preying upon superpods of Sperm Whales in the waters off the Kalpitiya Peninsula (eastern half of the Gulf of Mannar), northwestern Sri Lanka. The incidents took place on two separate occasions during the months of March and April, 2017.

An Undefined Something Else: Barthes, Culture, Neutral Life

How might Roland Barthes’ posthumously published account of the Neutral invite us to rethink the very activity of cultural analysis? How did Barthes the cultural critic change when, towards the end of his career, he described and desired Neutral Life? Cultural criticism has often taken Barthes’ early semiological work as a guide, but this essay examines how we might need to reorient ourselves as critics, shift our stance, learn to look and live differently in the light of Barthes’ later focus on the Neutral.

Mego Kin Classification

This is the first published account of kin classification of Mego, a district in the extreme eastern part of the Lio region of Flores Island. Despite recent changes affecting marriage practices, the terminology survives as a classification of asymmetric alliance. Terminological usage is discussed with reference to traditional social forms and comparatively, in relation to several other Lio terminologies, cognate terms in other Ngadha-Lio languages, and Malayo-Polynesian and Austronesian protoforms. Needham’s (1984) blanket characterization of an implicitly unitary “Lio” terminology as revealing features of asymmetric alliance in the first ascending and descending levels, but symmetric features in ego’s level, is refuted by showing quite continuous variation among different parts of Lio, as well as symmetric indications in other levels. The latter are discussed both as features that ignore or supersede “wife-takers” subordination to “wife-givers” as receivers of brides, and as evidence for a historical transformation from symmetric to asymmetric alliance.

Plotting the field: Fragments and narrative in Malinowski's stories of the baloma

Anthropologists have long relied on powerful concepts operant in the societies where they have carried out fieldwork to unlock the meanings of various, even seemingly disparate, practices and experiences, and which, in virtue of their sharing a name, are given coherence by ethnographic and ethnological texts. In this essay, we examine how anthropological icons like hau, mana, and the shaman, are created, and suggest that there might be fragments encountered during fieldwork that do not, in themselves, necessarily add up to a coherent whole, but which are fit into stories of these kinds because of the pressure of narrativity within conventional notions of anthropological theory. To illustrate this argument, we draw in particular on Malinowski’s stories of the baloma, Trobriander spirits of the dead, reading his well-known fieldwork diaries alongside his published account, in order to show how life is always stitched across multiple registers of storytelling, some of which take the form of narrative and others that do not. Attending to the space between these modalities, or to their crossings, a different picture of theory begins to emerge, and which hews a bit closer to our ordinary experience of social life.

The New World in Salvation History

Readers of Miguel Sánchez’s Imagen de la Virgen María, which contained the first published account of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s acclaimed apparitions to the indigenous neophyte Juan Diego, rarely recognize that he was trained in the theology of the church fathers, particularly in the writings of Saint Augustine. Interpretations of Sánchez have ranged from positivist condemnations for his lack of historical documentation to laudatory praise for his defense of pious tradition to emphases on his criollo patriotism as expressed through his adulation of Guadalupe and the baroque culture of New Spain. This chapter assesses Sánchez’s work as well as the origins and formative phase of Guadalupan devotion over the century preceding his publication. It illuminates the influence of patristic thought and theological method on Sánchez, as well as the frequently ignored but foundational role of his theology and that of the church fathers on the Guadalupe tradition.

A FORMAL PROOF OF THE KEPLER CONJECTURE

This article describes a formal proof of the Kepler conjecture on dense sphere packings in a combination of the HOL Light and Isabelle proof assistants. This paper constitutes the official published account of the now completed Flyspeck project.