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West African (west + african)
Terms modified by West African Selected AbstractsGlobal patterns of marine turtle bycatchCONSERVATION LETTERS, Issue 3 2010Bryan P. Wallace Abstract Fisheries bycatch is a primary driver of population declines in several species of marine megafauna (e.g., elasmobranchs, mammals, seabirds, turtles). Characterizing the global bycatch seascape using data on bycatch rates across fisheries is essential for highlighting conservation priorities. We compiled a comprehensive database of reported data on marine turtle bycatch in gillnet, longline, and trawl fisheries worldwide from 1990 to 2008. The total reported global marine turtle bycatch was ,85,000 turtles, but due to the small percentage of fishing effort observed and reported (typically <1% of total fleets), and to a global lack of bycatch information from small-scale fisheries, this likely underestimates the true total by at least two orders of magnitude. Our synthesis also highlights an apparently universal pattern across fishing gears and regions where high bycatch rates were associated with low observed effort, which emphasizes the need for strategic bycatch data collection and reporting. This study provides the first global perspective of fisheries bycatch for marine turtles and highlights region,gear combinations that warrant urgent conservation action (e.g., gillnets, longlines, and trawls in the Mediterranean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean) and region,gear combinations in need of enhanced observation and reporting efforts (e.g., eastern Indian Ocean gillnets, West African trawls). [source] Toward a Critical Phenomenology of "Illegality": State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, IsraelINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 3 2007Sarah S. Willen ABSTRACT Given the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so-called "illegal" migration in the present historical moment, this article contends that phenomenologically engaged ethnography has a crucial role to play in sensitizing not only anthropologists, but also policymakers, politicians, and broader publics to the complicated, often anxiety-ridden and frightening realities associated with "the condition of migrant illegality," both of specific host society settings and comparatively across the globe. In theoretical terms, the article constitutes a preliminary attempt to link pressing questions in the fields of legal anthropology and anthropology of transnational migration, on one hand, with recent work by phenomenologically oriented scholars interested in the anthropology of experience, on the other. The article calls upon ethnographers of undocumented transnational migration to bridge these areas of scholarship by applying what can helpfully be characterized as a "critical phenomenological" approach to the study of migrant "illegality" (Willen, 2006; see also Desjarlais, 2003). This critical phenomenological approach involves a three-dimensional model of illegality: first, as a form of juridical status; second, as a sociopolitical condition; and third, as a mode of being-in-the-world. In developing this model, the article draws upon 26 non-consecutive months of ethnographic field research conducted within the communities of undocumented West African (Nigerian and Ghanaian) and Filipino migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel, between 2000 and 2004. During the first part of this period, "illegal" migrants in Israel were generally treated as benign, excluded "Others." Beginning in mid-2002, however, a resource-intensive, government-sponsored campaign of mass arrest and deportation reconfigured the condition of migrant "illegality" in Israel and, in effect, transformed these benign "Others" into wanted criminals. By analyzing this transformation the article highlights the profound significance of examining not only the judicial and sociopolitical dimensions of what it means to be "illegal" but also its impact on migrants' modes of being-in-the-world. [source] Phylogeography, phylogeny and hybridization in trichechid sirenians: implications for manatee conservationMOLECULAR ECOLOGY, Issue 2 2006JULIANA A. VIANNA Abstract The three living species of manatees, West Indian (Trichechus manatus), Amazonian (Trichechus inunguis) and West African (Trichechus senegalensis), are distributed across the shallow tropical and subtropical waters of America and the western coast of Africa. We have sequenced the mitochondrial DNA control region in 330 Trichechus to compare their phylogeographic patterns. In T. manatus we observed a marked population structure with the identification of three haplotype clusters showing a distinct spatial distribution. A geographic barrier represented by the continuity of the Lesser Antilles to Trinidad Island, near the mouth of the Orinoco River in Venezuela, appears to have restricted the gene flow historically in T. manatus. However, for T. inunguis we observed a single expanding population cluster, with a high diversity of very closely related haplotypes. A marked geographic population structure is likely present in T. senegalensis with at least two distinct clusters. Phylogenetic analyses with the mtDNA cytochrome b gene suggest a clade of the marine Trichechus species, with T. inunguis as the most basal trichechid. This is in agreement with previous morphological analyses. Mitochondrial DNA, autosomal microsatellites and cytogenetic analyses revealed the presence of hybrids between the T. manatus and T. inunguis species at the mouth of the Amazon River in Brazil, extending to the Guyanas and probably as far as the mouth of the Orinoco River. Future conservation strategies should consider the distinct population structure of manatee species, as well as the historical barriers to gene flow and the likely occurrence of interspecific hybridization. [source] MGEA5 -14 polymorphism and type 2 diabetes in Mexico CityAMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 4 2007E. A. Cameron A family-based study has recently reported that a variant located in intron 10 of the gene MGEA5 increases susceptibility to Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). We evaluated the distribution of this SNP in a sample of T2D patients (N = 271) and controls (N = 244) from Mexico City. The frequency of the T allele was higher in the cases (2.6%) than in the controls (1.8%). After adjusting for age, sex, BMI, education, and individual ancestry the odds ratio was 1.60 but the 95% confidence interval was wide and overlapped 1 (0.52,4.86, P -value : 0.404). In order to characterize the distribution of the MGEA5 -14 polymorphism in the relevant parental populations, we genotyped this variant in European (and European Americans), West African, and Native American samples. The T-allele was present at a frequency of 2.3% in Spain, 4.2% in European Americans, and 13% in Western Africans, but was absent in two Native American samples from Mexico and Peru. Given the low frequency of the T-allele, further studies using large sample sizes will be required to confirm the role of this variant in T2D. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 19:593,596, 2007. © 2007Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Biohistorical approaches to "race" in the United States: Biological distances among African Americans, European Americans, and their ancestors,AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Heather J.H. Edgar Abstract Folk taxonomies of race are the categorizations used by people in their everyday judgments concerning the persons around them. As cultural traditions, folk taxonomies may shape gene flow so that it is unequal among groups sharing geography. The history of the United States is one of disparate people being brought together from around the globe, and provides a natural experiment for exploring the relationship between culture and gene flow. The biohistories of African Americans and European Americans were compared to examine whether population histories are shaped by culture when geography and language are shared. Dental morphological data were used to indicate phenotypic similarity, allowing diachronic change through United States history to be considered. Samples represented contemporary and historic African Americans and European Americans and their West African and European ancestral populations (N = 1445). Modified Mahalanobis' D2 and Mean Measure of Divergence statistics examined how biological distances change through time among the samples. Results suggest the social acceptance for mating between descendents of Western Europeans and Eastern and Southern European migrants to the United States produced relatively rapid gene flow between the groups. Although African Americans have been in the United States much longer than most Eastern and Southern Europeans, social barriers have been historically stronger between them and European Americans. These results indicate that gene flow is in part shaped by cultural factors such as folk taxonomies of race, and have implications for understanding contemporary human variation, relationships among prehistoric populations, and forensic anthropology. Am J Phys Anthropol 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Floral scent of bat-pollinated species: West Africa vs. the New WorldBIOLOGICAL JOURNAL OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY, Issue 2 2004STEFAN PETTERSSON Floral scent of seven West African bat-pollinated tree species, belonging to six families, was collected in situ from flowering individuals using headspace adsorption. The seven species shared neither any specific compounds nor any other discernible pattern in their floral scent composition. Most of the identified compounds are common in the floral scent of species pollinated by a variety of animals. Adansonia digitata (Bombacaceae) was the only African species found to have a substantial proportion of sulphur compounds in its floral scent. This feature contrasts with the sampled New World bat-pollinated plants, which frequently contain these compounds. The floral scent of Ceiba pentandra (Bombacaceae), native to both South America and Africa, contained no sulphur substances, contradicting a previous study in the New World that identified the major floral compounds as dimethyl disulphide and dimethyl trisulphide. We suggest that the differences in the floral scent of C. pentandra, including the absence of sulphur compounds in the African variety, result from the different selective regimes exerted by the Pteropotidae bats, in Africa, and Phyllostomidae bats, in the New World, that visit their flowers. © 2004 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2004, 82, 161,168. [source] A panel of ancestry informative markers for estimating individual biogeographical ancestry and admixture from four continents: utility and applications,HUMAN MUTATION, Issue 5 2008Indrani Halder Abstract Autosomal ancestry informative markers (AIMs) are useful for inferring individual biogeographical ancestry (I-BGA) and admixture. Ancestry estimates obtained from Y and mtDNA are useful for reconstructing population expansions and migrations in our recent past but individual genomic admixture estimates are useful to test for association of admixture with phenotypes, as covariate in association studies to control for stratification and, in forensics, to estimate certain overt phenotypes from ancestry. We have developed a panel of 176 autosomal AIMs that can effectively distinguish I-BGA and admixture proportions from four continental ancestral populations: Europeans, West Africans, Indigenous Americans, and East Asians. We present allele frequencies for these AIMs in all four ancestral populations and use them to assess the global apportionment of I-BGA and admixture diversity among some extant populations. We observed patterns of apportionment similar to those described previously using sex and autosomal markers, such as European admixture for African Americans (14.3%) and Mexicans (43.2%), European (65.5%) and East Asian affiliation (27%) for South Asians, and low levels of African admixture (2.8,10.8%) mirroring the distribution of Y E3b haplogroups among various Eurasian populations. Using simulation studies and pedigree analysis we show that I-BGA estimates obtained using this panel and a four-population model has a high degree of precision (average root mean square error [RMSE]=0.026). Using ancestry,phenotype associations we demonstrate that a large and informative AIM panel such as this can help reduce false-positive and false-negative associations between phenotypes and admixture proportions, which may result when using a smaller panel of less informative AIMs. Hum Mutat 29(5), 648,658, 2008. © 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Mass Producing Food Traditions for West Africans AbroadAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2007ELISHA P. RENNE In this article, I examine West African foods sold mainly in specialty grocery stores, focusing on how technologies used in food production in West Africa are referenced in the brand names and packaging of processed African foods sold in the United States. Through their association with "timeless" West African food-processing techniques, such foods evoke memories of childhood and home. Yet the transformation of West African foods through new technologies of processing, packaging, and branding reflects different time and health concerns of West African immigrants living in the United States. Through their purchase of time-saving, mass-produced, and hygienically packaged foodstuffs, which are ideologically similar to but technologically very different from the production processes and cooking in Africa, West Africans in the United States use food to maintain social relations with their particular families, hometown associations, and religious groups, while also constituting national, regional, and global connections through the reinvention of food traditions. [source] Allelic association between the NRAMP1 gene and susceptibility to tuberculosis in Guinea,ConakryANNALS OF HUMAN GENETICS, Issue 6 2000A. C. L. CERVINO Forty four families from Guinea,Conakry were analysed to test for association between NRAMP1 (Natural Resistance Associated Macrophage Protein 1) polymorphisms and tuberculosis. Each family included at least one affected sib and one parent. Healthy sibs were also analysed and on average the families included four members. A total of 160 individuals were included in the final dataset. The analysis of association was performed using an extended TDT test, TRANSMIT, to allow for missing information in the parental genotypes. Three polymorphisms in the NRAMP1 gene were typed: a microsatellite (CA) repeat, a 4 bp deletion in the 3, untranslated region and a single nucleotide change in intron 4. The single base change in intron 4 was significantly associated (p= 0.036) with tuberculosis. Our results therefore confirm, using a family-based approach on a newly studied population, the previously reported association between this polymorphism and tuberculosis in a population-based study of West Africans. [source] | |||||||||||||