A lesson from Bass Strait on connectivity conservation

Isolation effects on the distributions of plant species in fragmented forests appear to be weak over tens to hundreds of years and strong over geological eras. The 250 km wide, 6.5 millennia old Bass Strait, and other millennium-scale disjunctions in the range of Eucalyptus regnans forests, were used to determine the effects of intermediate periods of isolation on plant species occurrence and composition. Three of six floristic communities were found on both sides of Bass Strait. The residuals from multiple regression models using climatic variables on the latitude vector were not explained by latitude, indicating negligible isolation effects from Bass Strait. However, there was a lesser compositional effect of disjunctions within land masses than between land masses, suggesting some effect of the larger barrier. No species that commonly occurred with E. regnans and were largely confined to wet forest exhibited absences from any region where the climate and soils were within their range. If areas isolated from each other for millennia can maintain their vascular plant biota, the expenditure of conservation funds on creating corridors to connect large areas separated by anthropogenic landscape modification might require more justification than it is currently afforded.     

Giving Girls a Shot: An Examination of Mandatory Vaccination Legislation

On June 8, 2006, the Food and Drug Administration approved Merck & Co.'s vaccine Gardasil, which protects women from the human papillomavirus (HPV). Twenty‐four states began entertaining initiatives that would make the vaccine mandatory for all fifth‐ and sixth‐grade girls in public schools. However, as the vaccine gained traction in the media, the dominant issue frame put forth by Merck & Co. was undermined by several competing morality concerns raised by citizens in newspaper opinion pieces. Using an analysis of selected media coverage and a logit analysis modeling the influence of competing morality, economic, and public‐health determinants on states' decision making, we investigate the ascent of issue salience surrounding the HPV vaccine, and the policy consideration process. The results from the analysis indicate that citizen‐initiated opposition increased the salience of the topic and changed the issue framing in which the mandatory vaccine legislation was being considered. State policy consideration was influenced by a mix of morality and public‐health determinants. Moreover, Merck's attempts to influence state policy failed to increase the likelihood of policy consideration.     

U.S. North-South labor migration and trade

The authors examine the roles of labor migration and commodity trade in the inter-regional equalization of the real wage rate in the United States. The emphasis is on North-South patterns. Theoretical models are first outlined and then tested using 1960 and 1970 census data and multi-regional input-output data for 1963. It is found that "the pattern of trade-embodied labor flow closely resembled the pattern of direct labor migration." It is also noted that "the South's hierarchical profile of relative plentifulness among age, education, and race-specific categories of work force tended to persist and remain fairly stable between 1960 and 1970.... One plausible hypothesis is that interregional commodity trade is accomplishing the bulk of the requisite adjustment in bringing about the real wage equalization."     

Gardens and the Bush: Gardeners’ Attitudes,Garden Types and Invasives

Garden plants that invade native vegetation can be a threat to native ecosystems. The species composition of gardens near the bush in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia is shown to relate to environmental variation and the attitudes of gardeners to their recreation, to native plants and to the bush. Four types of gardens are discriminated: the species‐poor shrub garden; the local native garden; the woodland garden; and the gardenesque. A group of gardeners who valued functional gardens, and the hard work in creating a garden, largely produced gardenesque outcomes. A strongly conservationist group of gardeners had native, woodland or shrub gardens. A group of gardeners who valued romance and privacy largely had woodland gardens. A small group of gardeners who liked gardens to create themselves, and preferred to minimize the act of gardening, tended to the shrub garden outcome. Plant species that invade the bush are least frequent in the more manicured shrub and gardenesque styles of garden than in the more informal local native and woodland gardens, in a dissonance between expressed attitudes and outcomes. Most of the most invasive weeds in the bush are shown to be independent of their occurrence in adjacent gardens, suggesting that integrated control programs involving both all gardeners within dispersal range, and bush managers, are necessary. The existence of a small number of respondents who see benefits in environmental weeds in their gardens, suggests that such programs would be ineffective without regulation, a solution offered by no respondent. However, regulation might be ineffective without community understanding, the raising of which was the main solution suggested by the interviewed gardeners.     

Pits,mounds, and vernal ponds in a Tasmanian subalpine grassland

Falling trees commonly turbate soils in primary forest, creating characteristic edaphic patterns related to pit and mound topography. Vernal ponds with associated mounds were observed in mineral soils on a treeless plain in subalpine Tasmania, Australia. The hypothesis that paired ponds and mounds on the plain originated as pit and mound features in forests that were later destroyed by fire was tested by comparing the soils and landforms caused by recent tree falls in adjacent forest with those on the plain. The soil characteristics, orientations, and dimensions of the ponds and mounds were consistent with a tree fall origin, although rare secondary ponds on the tops of mounds may derive from the burrowing activities of the medium‐sized marsupial, Vombatus ursinus (common wombat). The characteristics of pond and mound soils suggested that most were hundreds to thousands of years old, with the ponds persisting because of differences in deflation, deposition, and organic matter formation between themselves and adjacent persistently dry land.