Through a detailed study of the circulation of European silent film in Australasia in the early twentieth century, this book challenges the historical myopia that treats Hollywood films as having ...always dominated global film culture. Before World War I, European silent feature films were ubiquitous in Australia and New Zealand, teaching Antipodean audiences about Continental cultures and familiarizing them with glamorous European stars, from Asta Nielsen to Emil Jannings. After the rise of Hollywood and then the shift to sound film, this history—and its implications for cross-cultural exchange—was lost. Julie K. Allen recovers that history, with its flamboyant participants, transnational currents, innovative genres, and geopolitical complications, bringing it all vividly to life. Making ground-breaking use of digitized Australian and New Zealand newspapers, the author reconstructs the distribution and exhibition of European silent films in the Antipodes, along the way incorporating compelling biographical sketches of the ambitious pioneers of the Australasian cinema industry. She reveals the complexity and competitiveness of the early cinema market, in a region with high consumer demand and low domestic production, and frames the dramatic shift to almost exclusively American cinema programming during World War I, contextualizing the rise of the art film in the 1920s in competition with mainstream Hollywood productions.
Environmental change can create opportunities for increased rates of lineage diversification, but continued species accumulation has been hypothesized to lead to slowdowns via competitive exclusion ...and niche partitioning. Such density-dependent models imply tight linkages between diversification and trait evolution, but there are plausible alternative models. Little is known about the association between diversification and key ecological and phenotypic traits at broad phylogenetic and spatial scales. Do trait evolutionary rates coincide with rates of diversification, are there lags among these rates, or is diversification niche-neutral? To address these questions, we combine a deeply sampled phylogeny for a major flowering plant clade—Saxifragales—with phenotype and niche data to examine temporal patterns of evolutionary rates. The considerable phenotypic and habitat diversity of Saxifragales is greatest in temperate biomes. Global expansion of these habitats since the mid-Miocene provided ecological opportunities that, with density-dependent adaptive radiation, should result in simultaneous rate increases for diversification, niche, and phenotype, followed by decreases with habitat saturation. Instead, we find that these rates have significantly different timings, with increases in diversification occurring at the mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum (∼15 Mya), followed by increases in niche and phenotypic evolutionary rates by ∼5 Mya; all rates increase exponentially to the present. We attribute this surprising lack of temporal coincidence to initial niche-neutral diversification followed by ecological and phenotypic divergence coincident with more extreme cold and dry habitats that proliferated into the Pleistocene. A lack of density-dependence contrasts with investigations of other cosmopolitan lineages, suggesting alternative patterns may be common in the diversification of temperate lineages.
Should we build our own phylogenetic trees based on gene sequence data, or can we simply use available synthesis phylogenies? This is a fundamental question that any study involving a phylogenetic ...framework must face at the beginning of the project. Building a phylogeny from gene sequence data (purpose-built phylogeny) requires more effort, expertise, and cost than subsetting an already available phylogeny (synthesis-based phylogeny). However, we still lack a comparison of how these two approaches to building phylogenetic trees influence common community phylogenetic analyses such as comparing community phylogenetic diversity and estimating trait phylogenetic signal. Here, we generated three purpose-built phylogenies and their corresponding synthesis-based trees (two from Phylomatic and one from the Open Tree of Life, OTL). We simulated 1,000 communities and 12,000 continuous traits along each purpose-built phylogeny. We then compared the effects of different trees on estimates of phylogenetic diversity (alpha and beta) and phylogenetic signal (Pagel’s λ and Blomberg’s K). Synthesis-based phylogenies generally yielded higher estimates of phylogenetic diversity when compared to purpose-built phylogenies. However, resulting measures of phylogenetic diversity from both types of phylogenies were highly correlated (Spearman’s ρ > 0.8 in most cases). Mean pairwise distance (both alpha and beta) is the index that is most robust to the differences in tree construction that we tested. Measures of phylogenetic diversity based on the OTL showed the highest correlation with measures based on the purpose-built phylogenies. Trait phylogenetic signal estimated with synthesis-based phylogenies, especially from the OTL, was also highly correlated with estimates of Blomberg’s K or close to Pagel’s λ from purpose-built phylogenies when traits were simulated under Brownian motion. For commonly employed community phylogenetic analyses, our results justify taking advantage of recently developed and continuously improving synthesis trees, especially the Open Tree of Life.
Phylogenomics and the evolution of hemipteroid insects Johnson, Kevin P.; Dietrich, Christopher H.; Friedrich, Frank ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
12/2018, Letnik:
115, Številka:
50
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Hemipteroid insects (Paraneoptera), with over 10% of all known insect diversity, are a major component of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Previous phylogenetic analyses have not consistently ...resolved the relationships among major hemipteroid lineages. We provide maximum likelihood-based phylogenomic analyses of a taxonomically comprehensive dataset comprising sequences of 2,395 single-copy, protein-coding genes for 193 samples of hemipteroid insects and outgroups. These analyses yield a well-supported phylogeny for hemipteroid insects. Monophyly of each of the three hemipteroid orders (Psocodea, Thysanoptera, and Hemiptera) is strongly supported, as are most relationships among suborders and families. Thysanoptera (thrips) is strongly supported as sister to Hemiptera. However, as in a recent large-scale analysis sampling all insect orders, trees from our data matrices support Psocodea (bark lice and parasitic lice) as the sister group to the holometabolous insects (those with complete metamorphosis). In contrast, four-cluster likelihood mapping of these data does not support this result. A molecular dating analysis using 23 fossil calibration points suggests hemipteroid insects began diversifying before the Carboniferous, over 365 million years ago. We also explore implications for understanding the timing of diversification, the evolution of morphological traits, and the evolution of mitochondrial genome organization. These results provide a phylogenetic framework for future studies of the group.
Shifts in flowering time among plant communities as a result of climate change, including extreme weather events, are a growing concern. These plant phenological changes may affect the quantity and ...quality of food sources for specialized insect pollinators. Plant–pollinator interactions are threatened by habitat alterations and biodiversity loss, and changes in these interactions may lead to declines in flower visitors and pollination services. Most prior research has focused on short-term plant–pollinator interactions, which do not accurately capture changes in pollination services. Here, we characterized long-term plant–pollinator interactions and identified potential risks to specialized butterfly species due to habitat loss, fragmented landscapes, and changes in plant assemblages. We used 21 years of historical data from museum specimens to track the potential effects of direct and indirect changes in precipitation, temperature, monsoons, and wildfires on plant–pollinator mutualism in the Great Basin and Sierra Nevada. We found decreased pollen richness associated with butterflies within sites, as well as an increase in pollen grain abundance of drought-tolerant plants, particularly in the past 10 years. Moreover, increased global temperatures and the intensity and frequency of precipitation and wildfires were negatively correlated with pollen diversity. Our findings have important implications for understanding plant–pollinator interactions and the pollination services affected by global warming.
The defining life experience of the Danish writer Tove Ditlevsen (1917–1976) was domestic trauma, both externally- and self-inflicted. Born at the end of the first World War amid an economic ...depression, Ditlevsen grew up in a hardscrabble working-class neighborhood of Copenhagen, lived through the Nazi occupation of her country during World War II, cycled through unhealthy sexual relationships, underwent illegal abortions and unnecessary surgeries, suffered from depression and prescription drug addiction, and died by suicide at the age of fifty-eight. Instead of repressing or denying her traumatic experiences, however, Ditlevsen chose to confront, reinscribe, and transform them in her literary texts, finding and offering hope that exposing secrets to public scrutiny can lead to acceptance and healing. In her searingly candid poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs, Ditlevsen exemplifies the efficacy of working through trauma: she confronts the fraught choices and abusive relationships by which her life was shaped candidly and unapologetically as an act of survival. In the process of bearing witness on the printed page to domestic trauma and its consequences, Ditlevsen models the vital role of literature, for both readers and writers, in documenting, processing, and overcoming traumatic experiences.
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