Cuckoo bees behave similarly to the well-known birds, cuckoos - they lay eggs in the nests of other bees. Proposed thesis charts the evolution of host specialization within the strictly cuckoo genus Sphecodes. According to the classical view based on the Red Queen hypothesis, parasites should gradually specialize during evolution to keep pace in the "arms race" with their hosts. Specialization is also perceived as an evolutionary dead end - narrow adaptation prevents change of host. To test these hypotheses phylogeny of tribus Sphecodini based on the partial sequences of five genes was constructed. For each ancestor has been by two methods of mapping ancestral characters (Bayesian method, Maximum Parsimony) specified, whether it was specialist or generalist and which kind of host or hosts it had. The results show that the original strategy of genus Sphecodes is specialization and generalists originated from specialized ancestors only recently. The results also show that the jumps between the hosts are common. These findings are inconsistent with the Red Queen hypothesis as well as with the view that specialization is an evolutionary dead end. Falsity of these hypotheses within the genus Sphecodes established also likelihood ratio test, in which the likelihood of model allowing two-way transition...

Previous research confirms that gender affects organizations and the overall organizational culture. Organizations are heavily gendered and, in most cases, to the disadvantage of women. It has been shown that gender bias within male-dominated organizations creates the queen bee syndrome, characterized by a lack of solidarity and hostile behavior amongst women. Because gender bias exists in all organizations, it is reasonable to believe it also exists in female-dominated organizations. This study examines the queen bee syndrome in female-dominated organizations, analyzing how the characteristics permeate the organizational culture. The study employs a qualitative research method and collects data through qualitative surveys with LiVO members, a Swedish union organization for managers within the health and care sector. The study aims to build on theory regarding the queen bee syndrome and extend knowledge about gendered organizations and female-dominated organizations. This study suggests that signs of the queen bee syndrome, to some extent, permeate the organizational culture in female-dominated organizations. However, the result also reveals that complexity and duality exist. The triggering structures that create the queen bee syndrome need to be addressed rather than the gender composition to counteract queen bee behavior.

Little is known about the behavioral patterns of honey bee queens. To determine if mated honey bee queens possess diel rhythmicity in behavior, we observed them in glass-sided observation hives using three types of observation regimes: focal studies consisting of 2-hour and 24-hour continuous observations as well as scan-sampling of multiple queens. All behaviors (active: walking, inspecting, egg-laying, begging for food, feeding, and grooming self; inactive: standing) occurred at all times of day and night, but no queen showed consistent diel rhythmicity in any of the individual behaviors. There were no consistent diel differences in active versus inactive behaviors or the number of bees in the queen's retinue. This arrhythmicity was unchanged despite daily changes in both light and temperature levels. The arrhythmic behavior observed by most of the honey bee queens inside the colony appears to be similar to that exhibited by worker bees before they initiate foraging behavior.

Mourning rituals and memorial aesthetics played an integral role in Victorian England. Queen Victoria's poet laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, confronted death on a literary level. His national elegiac poetry — addressed to Victoria — is illuminated when read as a funeral sermon. By drawing out the funeral sermon techniques Tennyson incorporates, we see that he assumes a role as religious mediator to counsel and comfort Victoria in her grief. Tennyson's funeral sermon message alters quite distinctively from Albert's death in 1861, to the death of the Duke of Clarence in 1892, where he makes a final effort to restore the Queen to an acceptance of her state and lead her to an active, healthy type of mourning. The corresponding poems, "Dedication" and "The Death of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale: to the Mourners," highlight Tennyson's unique role as spiritual guide for Queen Victoria, and can be read as a series of funeral sermons. Indeed, Tennyson incorporates various funeral sermon elements over decades in order to encourage the Queen to heal and cope with the trauma of death in the royal family.

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<p>Most critical studies of Ford are largely general in nature, mainly because of the comprehensive, 'pioneering' positions critics have tended to adopt in order to show that Ford is indeed worthy of our attention. As a result, the major novels and romances --the three volumes of Fifth Queen (1906, 1907, 1908), The Good Soldier (1915), and the four volumes of Parade's End (1924, 1925, 1926, 1928) --still need the kind of close, textual analysis that would demonstrate their value as subtle and intricate works of art. In this study, I have attempted to provide a detailed examination of these works.</p> <p>Perceiving an additional 'flaw' in most evaluations of these fictions, whereby form and content are discussed as separate entities, I have focused, instead, on the "rhetoric" of the novels --on the ways in which we are made to see Ford's fictional worlds. Seen through the perspectives afforded by Scharer's "Technique as Discovery", Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction and Lodge's Language of Fiction, this theoretical framework is discussed in the opening chapter. By focusing upon rhetoric as being an integral part of the process by which we are moved to a unique view of experience, I try to illuminate some of the "enigmas" surrounding the selected fictions, as well as counter many of the negative criticisms that have hitherto appeared.</p> <p>In my chapter on Fifth Queen, I argue that the rhetoric Ford there employs is designed to fully explore the romance form. By focusing upon the range of effects in the trilogy, we see that, contrary to its general reputation, Fifth Queen is not a structure without unity, but a unified "song" of the romance heroine who seeks to give a shape to experience through a faith in something outside the self. The other characters in the trilogy fail to respond to Katherine's qualities, and the rhetorical effects Ford employs bring out their failings and Katherine's triumph of selfhood. These failings are especially noticeable in Henry VIII who is incapable of the kind of love which would take him beyond his own limitations. In many ways, ·the contrast between Henry's imprisonment in his "passions" and "prides", and Katherine's freedom through a love for something outside the self, is a pattern repeated throughout Ford's work.</p> <p>Any consideration of the rhetoric of The Good Soldier must deal with the narrator Ford uses to tell his "Tale of Passion". I show how the values or norms we are made to see as of importance in the novel are precisely those which help the narrator tell his tale. This is particularly true of the most important value, passion. Passion enables Dowell, as faith does Katherine, to transcend the self in order to escape its constraints; as a consequence, he can see things from another point of view. It also allows him to give experience a form, and, through this creative act, he finds a degree of self-awareness and freedom. Passion is the value he comes to see as being the sentiment that Edward Ashburnham tried hardest to express. It is the sentiment that Leonora fails to understand. However, Dowell does understand passion and the "affair" as a whole; as a result, he comes to align himself with the "passionate" who are destroyed by a "garrison" mentality that denies anything exceptional in life.</p> <p>Passion is also the subject of Parade's End, and the value which lies behind its telling. Approaching the novel through its rhetoric, I show how the tetralogy is a unified work, of which the much maligned fourth volume, The Last Post, is an integral part. The sequence of volumes is structured in such a way that it explores various kinds of passion: those that are destructive and imprison the characters involved, and those that are creative and are seen as a source of life. We, as readers, experience these passions, and the shaping of our experience depends upon Ford's successful handling of his medium--especially his use of character, point of view, juxtaposition, language, time and setting. I analyses these aspects of the novel's rhetoric by tracing them through the entire fabric of the tetralogy. There emerges an excellent depiction of passion which is the equal of The Good Soldier.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The effects of miticides on the reproductive physiology of queens and drones were examined. The first study examined the effects of Apistan (fluvalinate), Check Mite+ (coumaphos), and Apilife VAR (74% thymol) on sperm production and viability in drones. Drones from colonies treated with each miticide were collected at sexual maturity. Sperm production was determined by counting the number of sperm in the seminal vesicles. Sperm for viability assays was analyzed by dual fluorescent staining. Apilife VAR and coumaphos significantly lowered (P<0.0001) sperm production and coumaphos treatments caused a significant decrease (P<0.0001) in the sperm viability. The effects of miticides on queens was examined by treating queen-rearing colonies and examining the number and viability of sperm in the spermathecae of newly mated queens. Queens from each treatment group were collected after mating and the spermathecae were removed and analyzed. Colonies treated with coumaphos failed to provide viable queens and were excluded. Apilife VAR was found to significantly decrease (P<0.0016) sperm viability. No significant differences in sperm numbers were found between treatments. The effect of miticides on sperm viability over time was also examined. Drones were reared as described, but the spermatozoa were collected as pooled samples from groups of drones. The pooled samples from each treatment were subdivided and analyzed periods of up to 6 weeks. Random samples were taken from each treatment (n = 6 pools) over a period of 6 weeks. The exposure of drones to coumaphos during development significantly reduced sperm viability for all 6 weeks, and caused a large decline in week 6. The potential impacts of these results on queen performance and failure are discussed. / Master of Science in Life Sciences

Form, space, rhythm, order, symmetry, balance, repetition, proportion and scale are few from a long checklist of principles that, if followed carefully by the designer, will result in "beautiful" architecture, or so I was told. However, what exactly is "beautiful"? In his book "The beautiful necessity" (1910, p.34) Claude Fayette Bragdon suggests that "Beauty is the name we give to truth we cannot understand". This statement implies that there is a hidden quality within each building, or even within each space, a quality that we can sense but cannot make sense of, a quality very similar to having a soul. The soul seems to linger on the threshold that divides two opposite worlds, it is always in-between. Between the dream and the awake, between the physical and the imaginary, between the conscious and the subconscious and between the real and the unreal. In this thesis, the "real" world consists of an animation studio (the program), the studio's staff and visitors, the selected site located in Alexandria, and it is bound by the building methods, materials and codes. The "unreal" world consists of four fictional characters that, assumingly, emerged from my subconscious and who live in a fictional dimension that overlaps ours.   The different encounters within the "real" world and within the "unreal" world, and also the interactions between the "real" and the "unreal" worlds are translated into an architectural language as an attempt to investigate the soul. / Master of Architecture