Perfect order Lansing, J. Stephen; Lansing, J. Stephen
2012., 20120916, 2012, 2006, 2006-01-01, 20060101, Letnik:
11
eBook
Along rivers in Bali, small groups of farmers meet regularly in water temples to manage their irrigation systems. They have done so for a thousand years. Over the centuries, water temple networks ...have expanded to manage the ecology of rice terraces at the scale of whole watersheds. Although each group focuses on its own problems, a global solution nonetheless emerges that optimizes irrigation flows for everyone. Did someone have to design Bali's water temple networks, or could they have emerged from a self-organizing process?
Perfect Order--a groundbreaking work at the nexus of conservation, complexity theory, and anthropology--describes a series of fieldwork projects triggered by this question, ranging from the archaeology of the water temples to their ecological functions and their place in Balinese cosmology. Stephen Lansing shows that the temple networks are fragile, vulnerable to the cross-currents produced by competition among male descent groups. But the feminine rites of water temples mirror the farmers' awareness that when they act in unison, small miracles of order occur regularly, as the jewel-like perfection of the rice terraces produces general prosperity. Much of this is barely visible from within the horizons of Western social theory.
The fruit of a decade of multidisciplinary research, this absorbing book shows that even as researchers probe the foundations of cooperation in the water temple networks, the very existence of the traditional farming techniques they represent is threatened by large-scale development projects.
First study published in English. An intractable, divisive social problem with roots in pre-history, the ongoing discrimination against Dôwa communities (Buraku). Identified with 'unclean' work ...linked to specific occupations, their resulting marginalization and isolation within society as a whole remains a veiled yet contested issue.
Female ants display a wide variety of morphological castes, including workers, soldiers, ergatoid (worker-like) queens and queens. Alternative caste development within a species arises from a ...variable array of genetic and environmental factors. Castes themselves are also variable across species and have been repeatedly gained and lost throughout the evolutionary history of ants. Here, we propose a simple theory of caste development and evolution. We propose that female morphology varies as a function of size, such that larger individuals possess more queen-like traits. Thus, the diverse mechanisms that influence caste development are simply mechanisms that affect size in ants. Each caste-associated trait has a unique relationship with size, producing a phenotypic space that permits some combinations of worker- and queen-like traits, but not others. We propose that castes are gained and lost by modifying the regions of this phenotypic space that are realized within a species. These modifications can result from changing the size-frequency distribution of individuals within a species, or by changing the association of tissue growth and size. We hope this synthesis will help unify the literature on caste in ants, and facilitate the discovery of molecular mechanisms underlying caste development and evolution.
The genome of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta Wurm, Yannick; Wang, John; Riba-Grognuz, Oksana ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
04/2011, Letnik:
108, Številka:
14
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Ants have evolved very complex societies and are key ecosystem members. Some ants, such as the fire ant Solenopsis invicta, are also major pests. Here, we present a draft genome of S. invicta, ...assembled from Roche 454 and Illumina sequencing reads obtained from a focal haploid male and his brothers. We used comparative genomic methods to obtain insight into the unique features of the 5. invicta genome. For example, we found that this genome harbors four adjacent copies of vitellogenin. A phylogenetic analysis revealed that an ancestral vitellogenin gene first underwent a duplication that was followed by possibly independent duplications of each of the daughter vitellogenins. The vitellogenin genes have undergone subfunctionalization with queen-and worker-specific expression, possibly reflecting differential selection acting on the queen and worker castes. Additionally, we identified more than 400 putative olfactory receptors of which at least 297 are intact. This represents the largest repertoire reported so far in insects. S. invicta also harbors an expansion of a specific family of lipid-processing genes, two putative orthologs to the transformer/feminizer sex differentiation gene, a functional DNA methylation system, and a single putative telomerase ortholog. EST data indicate that this 5. invicta telomerase ortholog has at least four spliceforms that differ in their use of two sets of mutually exclusive exons. Some of these and other unique aspects of the fire ant genome are likely linked to the complex social behavior of this species.
While many studies suggest that Indian Untouchables do not entirely share the hierarchical values characteristic of the caste system, Michael Moffatt argues that the most striking feature of the ...lowest castes is their pervasive cultural consensus with those higher in the system. Though rural Untouchables question their particular position in the system, they seldom question the system as a whole, and they maintain among themselves a set of hierarchical conceptions and institutions virtually identical to those of the dominant social order.
Based on fourteen months of fieldwork with Untouchable castes in two villages in Tamil Nadu, south India, Professor Moffatt's analysis specifies ways in which the Untouchables are both excluded and included by the higher castes. Ethnographically, he pursues his structural analysis in two related domains: Untouchable social structure, and Untouchable religious belief and practice.
The author finds that in those aspects of their lives where Untouchables are excluded from larger village life, they replicate in their own community nearly every institution, role, and ranked relation from which they have been excluded. Where the Untouchables are included by the higher castes, they complete the hierarchical whole by accepting their low position and playing their assigned roles. Thus the most oppressed members of Indian society are often among the truest believers in the system.
Originally published in 1979.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The origin of complex worker-caste systems in ants perplexed Darwin
and has remained an enduring problem for evolutionary and developmental biology
. Ants originated approximately 150 million years ...ago, and produce colonies with winged queen and male castes as well as a wingless worker caste
. In the hyperdiverse genus Pheidole, the wingless worker caste has evolved into two morphologically distinct subcastes-small-headed minor workers and large-headed soldiers
. The wings of queens and males develop from populations of cells in larvae that are called wing imaginal discs
. Although minor workers and soldiers are wingless, vestiges or rudiments of wing imaginal discs appear transiently during soldier development
. Such rudimentary traits are phylogenetically widespread and are primarily used as evidence of common descent, yet their functional importance remains equivocal
. Here we show that the growth of rudimentary wing discs is necessary for regulating allometry-disproportionate scaling-between head and body size to generate large-headed soldiers in the genus Pheidole. We also show that Pheidole colonies have evolved the capacity to socially regulate the growth of rudimentary wing discs to control worker subcaste determination, which allows these colonies to maintain the ratio of minor workers to soldiers. Finally, we provide comparative and experimental evidence that suggests that rudimentary wing discs have facilitated the parallel evolution of complex worker-caste systems across the ants. More generally, rudimentary organs may unexpectedly acquire novel regulatory functions during development to facilitate adaptive evolution.
Abstract The evolution of a reproductively altruistic caste contributed to the success of eusociality through the division of labour. In termites, the proportion of soldiers in the colonies increased ...throughout the group's evolution. In Nasutitermitinae, soldiers have a crucial role in defence, resource selection and foraging. However, the role of soldiers and workers in colony immunity is still poorly understood. Here, we evaluated the role of mixed caste groups in the social immunity of Nasutitermes corniger (Termitidae: Nasutitermitinae) exposed to the entomopathogenic fungi Metarhizium anisopliae (Metsch.). We tested the hypothesis that the presence of workers and soldiers optimizes defence against pathogens, and this defence is increased when the soldier ratio is closer to what naturally occurs in colonies. Our results showed that mixed caste groups of N. corniger exposed to M. anisopliae survive longer compared to groups with only one caste. In addition, termite groups that died from fungi were less likely to show fungal infection in mixed caste groups. The behavioural observations suggest that in the natural proportion of soldiers, allogrooming and trophallaxis play a crucial role in the control of disease and its death hazard in termites. Soldiers may play an important role in colony immunity, being able to start the alarm signal indicating the threat of pathogens. Our results show that the presence of the two castes promotes possible mechanisms for socially mediated immunity. This study may help in the understanding of the function of the soldiers and workers and the significance of pathogens in termite eusocial evolution.
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