Tag: Cooperation

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Exploitation in Micro and Macro by Jerome Berglund

reproduction of
creepy manor in small scale
capital idea

By Jerome Berglund

Just as certain species of ants given ample opportunity will attempt to enslave other species, their victims must remain constantly vigilant to maintain or fight desperately to regain liberty. Social and economic patterns of exploitation and expropriation if not guarded against fiercely and checked through education and equitable distribution of resources can disrupt and endanger vulnerable populations under any conditions, from systems of the most diminutive sizes no less than those largest.

Further reading: 

Slave-making ants (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave-making_ant

Author bio:

Jerome Berglund, recently nominated for the 2022 Touchstone awards, graduated from USC’s film program, worked in the entertainment industry before returning to the midwest where he has been employed as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves.  Jerome has exhibited many haiku, senryu and haiga online and in print, most recently in the Asahi Shimbun, Bear Creek Haiku, Bamboo Hut, Cold Moon Journal, Daily Haiga, Failed Haiku, Haiku Dialogue, Scarlet Dragonfly, Under the Basho, and the Zen Space. You can follow him on Twitter @BerglundJerome and find more of his poetry here:  https://flowersunmedia.wixsite.com/jbphotography/post/haiku-senryu-and-haiga-publications

Check out more sciku from Jerome here: ‘Environmental Charlie Browns’, ‘Illusion’, and ‘Civil Disobedience’, and ‘Vested Interests’.

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Silver linings

feeling like a fraud
open handed, steady eyed
gaining patient trust

Imposture syndrome affects people in all areas of life, and particularly in professional working life. It’s a behaviour where an individual doubts their own skills, abilities and accomplishments and are afraid of being exposed as a fraud. It’s thought that nearly 70% of people feel symptoms of imposture syndrome at one or more times in their life, and the phenomenon can impact mental and physical wellbeing.

Whilst the consequences of imposture syndrome are generally negative, a recent study suggests that there may be some benefits too. Basima Tewfik (2022) studied over 3,600 employees from a broad range of sectors, including from an investment advisory firm and a physician-training program. She found that people with workplace imposter thoughts become more other-oriented, getting evaluated as being higher in interpersonal effectiveness.

For instance, trainee doctors with more impostor thoughts were rated by their patients as being more interpersonally effective, more empathetic, as better listeners and better able to draw out information during doctor-patient interactions. The trainee doctors with imposture thoughts were exhibiting greater eye gaze, more open hand gestures and more nodding – all indicators of an other-focused orientation.

Importantly, Tewfik found that workplace imposter thoughts didn’t significantly affect objective performance – you might feel like a fraud but your colleagues wouldn’t guess from the quality of your work.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2020.1627

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Wood Wide Web by Gauri Sirur

Fungal filaments
Humming under forest floor
Trees communicate.

By Gauri Sirur

Trees communicate with each other through an underground network of mycorrhizal fungi. The fungal strands colonize the tree roots, and form a web connecting the roots to each other.

The relationship between the fungi and trees is usually symbiotic. The fungi take a share of the sugars that the trees produce during photosynthesis. In return, the trees receive nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen that the fungi synthesize from the soil.

Through the network, trees share food — carbon-rich sugars, nitrogen, and phosphorous — with other trees. They also send out warning messages about predators such as aphids and caterpillars. Or about pathogen attacks. This buys their neighbors time to activate their defenses.

All is not sugar and spice, however. Both trees and fungi try to extract the maximum amount of nutrition from the other while giving the minimum in return.

Trees are more likely to help their kin than an unrelated tree. Or to release toxic substances to harm an unwanted neighbor.

Dr. Suzanne Simard, a scientist at the University of British Columbia, discovered the fungal network in 1997. She dubbed it the “Wood Wide Web.”

Further reading:

‘Wood Wide Web mapped for the first time’ – Science article.

‘Uncovering the hidden language of trees’ – Suzanne Simard interview.

‘Net transfer of carbon between ectomycorrhizal tree species in the field’ – Suzanne Simard’s 1997 research paper first documenting the fungal network.

Gauri Sirur enjoys writing about nature, family, and anything that intrigues her. You can find her writing at gaurisirur.wordpress.com and gaurisirur.medium.com.

This sciku was originally published by Gauri Sirur on Medium.com here.

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The Core Correlate of COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance by Dr Michael J. Leach

vaccine acceptance
correlates with a belief
in the greater good

by Dr Michael J. Leach

During 2020 and 2021, acceptance of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) vaccines has been among the most topical areas of health science research. As COVID-19 vaccine availability continues to rise worldwide in a global effort to combat the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, more and more people are faced with the question of whether or not to get vaccinated. Even when an approved COVID-19 vaccine is readily available to a particular subgroup of the global population, a high level of vaccine uptake cannot be guaranteed. For one reason or another, individuals within the population may be hesitant to roll up their sleeves to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

In a UK population-based study, Freeman et al. (2021) investigated factors related to vaccine hesitancy through an online survey completed by 5,114 adults over September-October 2020. The research team measured vaccine hesitancy within the study population using a specially developed tool—the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy scale. While 71.7% of surveyed adults expressed willingness to accept the COVID-19 vaccine, 16.6% were very unsure about vaccination and 11.7% showed strong vaccine hesitancy.

Among the various beliefs, views, attitudes, and past experiences considered by the researchers in their analysis, the factor most strongly correlated with vaccine hesitancy was whether or not individuals believed in the collective importance of COVID-19 vaccination. An individual’s belief in the collective importance of COVID-19 vaccination is defined as the recognition that getting vaccinated protects the community and saves lives. This belief is consistent with the critically important field of public health and with the idea of doing something—in this case, getting vaccinated—for ‘the greater good’.

Based on the results of their study, Freeman et al. suggest that public health messages highlighting the societal benefits of vaccination could be broadcast in an effort to increase belief in the collective importance of COVID-19 vaccination and, thus, improve vaccine acceptance and uptake.

The original research article described here is available open access online:
Freeman D et al. (2021). COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the UK: the Oxford coronavirus explanations, attitudes, and narratives survey (Oceans) II. Psychological Medicine 1–15. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7804077/pdf/S0033291720005188a.pdf

Michael J. Leach (@m_jleach) is an Australian epidemiologist, biostatistician, and poet based at the Monash University School of Rural Health. His debut poetry collection is Chronicity (Melbourne Poets Union, 2020).

Check out more sciku by Michael, including ‘Drug-Induced Hip Fractures‘, ‘The Psychopharmacological Revolution‘, ‘Quality of Life at Seven Years Post-Stroke‘, ‘The Early Impacts of COVID-19 on Australian General Practice‘, ‘The Burden of Bushfire Smoke‘, and ‘Australian Science Poetry‘ with science communicator Rachel Rayner. Michael also has another Covid-19-related sciku published in Pulse which is well worth checking out: ‘flu shot announcement‘.

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Resources forecast

Resources forecast

bat foraging. Alone? Group?

You are what you eat.

 

Whilst Darwin’s finches are a classic example of selection acting on bird morphology and resulting in species that are able to eat different seed sizes and shapes, food characteristics can result in evolutionary impacts that are less immediately obvious.

Egert-Berg et al (2018) investigated the impact of ephemeral food sources on bat social behaviour. By tracking the foraging behaviour of 5 species of bats the researchers found that in bat species where food sources were predictable individual bats foraged alone, reducing the impacts of conspecific competition. In contrast, where food resources were unpredictable and transient bat species foraged in groups. The research is a fantastic example of a collaboration between researchers in different countries and continents.

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.09.064

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You aren’t one of us.

Help! Help! Predator!

Guys, why aren’t you helping me?

You aren’t one of us.

 

Jackdaws respond to anti-predator calls to join the caller in mobbing the predator and driving it away. Yet researchers have now found that who the caller is will affect the level of response.

In playback experiments Woods et al (2018) that the highest response was to nestbox residents who would be highly familiar with the caller. The level of response to an anti-predator call diminished as familiarity decreased from colony members to non-colony members and then to rooks (a species that often lives alongside jackdaws).

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-25793-y

 

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The kids help out

Staying at home, the

kids help out. Breeding becomes

cooperative.

 

In cooperatively breeding species individuals help to raise offspring that are not their own, but how did this costly behaviour evolve? By comparing 3,005 species using phylogenetic analyses Griesser et al (2017) suggest that cooperative breeding in birds occurred in two stages.

First, families formed by the prolonging of parent-offspring associations, with chicks not leaving the nest when nutritionally independent. This appears to have occurred in productive environments where the cost of the offspring remaining at home for longer is less.

Second, the offspring remaining at the home nest then start to help out. In contrast to the formation of family units, the researchers suggest that this happened in more variable environments where the retained helpers can buffer in harsh years.

This theory helps to explain the geographic distribution of cooperatively breeding bird species too – areas where these species are found have often experienced historical declines in productivity. The pre-decline environment may have fostered family formation whilst the decline may have then resulted in the step to cooperative breeding.