Sepulchre

The work in Sepulchre (2015) came from my research into female ritual practices and my fascination with specific mythological and historical narratives. These themes were explored during a month-long Summer Residency at Boxcopy Contemporary Artspace. Of particular note were the chronicles and rituals from the terrain around the Adriatic Sea, including Greece and Italy. During the residency, I kept referring to specific mythological texts, which had women as the main protagonists. I kept returning to female characters whose representation was framed by aspects of their sexuality. When looking at these women together, they seemed to sit within a greater narrative archetype, a communal dialogue of shared characteristics, repetitious narrative components and mutual landscapes. Sepulchre became my attempt to develop a conversation between these women by drawing from their commonality, and reimagining these collective elements into sculptural objects and moving images. The video explores an apotropaic gesture, a Baubo-style ‘flashing’. A glass star chart rests on white cliffs, speaking to the narrative of Andromeda and her position as both a celestial and terrene landscape. Another object, a wall mounted copper light burst, pays homage to the framing device used by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. By reconciling these dialogues, I was interested in exploring expanded portrayals of female sexuality and depictions of subversive and authorial femininity, developed through connotations with mysticism, ritual practice and women’s knowledge.

Postharvest physiology and volatile production by flowers of Ptilotus nobilis

Ptilotus nobilis (Lindl.) F. Muell. has potential in the floriculture industries as a cut flower crop. Ethylene production and respiration rates, fresh weight changes and volatile scent production from cut inflorescences of P. nobilis cultivars Passion (dark pink flowers) and Purity (white-green flowers) were measured during vase life. Inflorescence weight loss was significant (P < 0.001) during vase life with wilting and colour loss being the primary reasons for loss of vase life. Inflorescences ready for the cut market stored and at 22 °C had vase lives of >12 d. Ethylene production by inflorescences was low to negligible. Treatment with silverthiosulphate (STS) and ethylene had no effects on vase life. Evidently, ethylene did not play a role in determining the postharvest longevity of cut P. nobilis flowers. Respiration rates of inflorescences were high at harvest (>700 mg CO2 kg−1 FW h−1) and declined gradually thereafter during vase life. Total volatile emissions followed a similar pattern. For Passion, respiration rates of immature florets were significantly greater (P = 0.02) than florets from other developmental stages while the calyx produced the most CO2. For Purity, respiration rates of florets of different maturities did not differ and the reproductive tissue produced the most CO2. Only fully opened mature florets with their stigma and anthers revealed, emitted significant quantities of volatiles (P < 0.001) and primarily from the calyx tissue for both cultivars. The individual volatiles differed somewhat for the two cultivars. However, both produced significant quantities of benzaldehyde, 3,5-dimethoxytoluene and benzyl alcohol. These compounds have previously been associated with desirable floral scent.

Postharvest physiology and volatile production by flowers of Ptilotus nobilis

Ptilotus nobilis (Lindl.) F. Muell. has potential in the floriculture industries as a cut flower crop. Ethylene production and respiration rates, fresh weight changes and volatile scent production from cut inflorescences of P. nobilis cultivars Passion (dark pink flowers) and Purity (white-green flowers) were measured during vase life. Inflorescence weight loss was significant (P < 0.001) during vase life with wilting and colour loss being the primary reasons for loss of vase life. Inflorescences ready for the cut market stored and at 22 °C had vase lives of >12 d. Ethylene production by inflorescences was low to negligible. Treatment with silverthiosulphate (STS) and ethylene had no effects on vase life. Evidently, ethylene did not play a role in determining the postharvest longevity of cut P. nobilis flowers. Respiration rates of inflorescences were high at harvest (>700 mg CO2 kg−1 FW h−1) and declined gradually thereafter during vase life. Total volatile emissions followed a similar pattern. For Passion, respiration rates of immature florets were significantly greater (P = 0.02) than florets from other developmental stages while the calyx produced the most CO2. For Purity, respiration rates of florets of different maturities did not differ and the reproductive tissue produced the most CO2. Only fully opened mature florets with their stigma and anthers revealed, emitted significant quantities of volatiles (P < 0.001) and primarily from the calyx tissue for both cultivars. The individual volatiles differed somewhat for the two cultivars. However, both produced significant quantities of benzaldehyde, 3,5-dimethoxytoluene and benzyl alcohol. These compounds have previously been associated with desirable floral scent.

Appalling behaviour

'Appalling Behaviour' is a critically acclaimed contemporary Australian monologue, written by AWGIE Award winning playwright, Stephen House. This production, directed and creatively adapted by Shane Pike, was presented at the Brisbane Powerhouse in February 2016, as part of Queensland's LGBTIQ festival, Melt. This adaptation of the work experimented with notions of gender, taking the original script and manipulating character and scene to investigate expressions of identity beyond the traditional notions of binary gender-norms. To this end, the sole character (and actor) was (re)presented as a homeless bi-sexual queen with the aim of inferring that gender un/ab-normative characters can exist not only as disruptors/comments on/agitators of traditional expectations of performed gender (both onstage and off), but can also exist as accepted characters in and of themselves. Put simply: can a bi-sexual queen just be an actor/character in a play, or do all gender extra-normative characters inherently exist as political, social and cultural challengers? If so, why is this the case and should we be aiming for this kind of character to be an accepted part of the performative fabric, seamless and fitting within any onstage situation and play (why can't Willy Loman, King Lear or Nora be gender non-normative), or should such (re)presentations always exist as 'different'? Is it time for individual expressions of gender to just 'be' and be accepted as givens, or are we not quite there yet?

Dung beetle communities in Madagascar

The traditional aim of community ecology has been to understand the origin and maintenance of species richness in local communities. Why certain species occur in one place but not in another, how ecologically apparently similar species use resources, what is the role of the regional species pool in affecting species composition in local communities, and so forth. Madagascar offers great opportunities to conduct such studies, since it is a very large island that has been isolated for tens of million of years. Madagascar has remarkable faunal and floral diversity and species level endemism reaches 100% in many groups of species. Madagascar is also exceptional for endemism at high taxonomic levels and for the skewed representation of many taxa in comparison with continental faunas. For example, native ungulates that are dominant large herbivorous mammals on the African continent are completely lacking in Madagascar. The largest native Malagasy herbivores, and the main dung producers for Malagasy dung beetles, are the endemic primates, lemurs. Cattle was introduced to Madagascar about 1,000 yrs ago and is today abundant and widespread. I have studied Malagasy dung beetle communities and the distributional patterns of species at several spatial scales and compared the results with comparable communities in other tropical areas. There are substantial differences in dung beetle communities in Madagascar and elsewhere in the tropics in terms of the life histories of the species, species ecological traits, local and regional species diversities, and the sizes of species geographical ranges. These differences are attributed to Madagascar s ancient isolation, large size, heterogeneous environment, skewed representation of the mammalian fauna, and recent though currently great human impact.

Phylogenetics of Myrmica ants and their social parasites

Understanding the overwhelming diversity of life calls for complex organisational schemes. The field of systematics may thus be seen as the cornerstone of evolutionary biology. In the last few decades, systematics has been rejuvenated through the introduction of molecular methods such as DNA barcoding and multi-gene phylogenetic approaches. These methods may shed new light on established taxonomic ideas and problems. For example, the classification of ants has aroused much debate due to reinterpretation of morphological characters or contradictions between molecular data and morphology. Only in the last few years a consensus was reached regarding the phylogeny of ant subfamilies. However, the situation remains deplorable for lower taxonomic ranks such as subfamilies, tribes and genera. This thesis describes the systematics and evolution of the Holarctic ant genus Myrmica and the tribe to which it belongs, Myrmicini. Using barcoding, molecular-phylogenetic data and divergence time estimations, it addresses questions regarding the taxonomy, morphology and biogeography of this group. Furthermore, the interrelationships between socially parasitic Myrmica species and their hosts (other species in the genus) were inferred. The phylogeny suggests that social parasitism evolved several times in Myrmica. Finally, this thesis investigated whether coevolution shaped the phylogeny of socially parasitic Maculinea butterflies that live inside Myrmica colonies. No evidence was found for coevolution.

Production of F4 Fimbrial Adhesin in Plants: a Model for Oral Porcine Vaccine against Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli

F4 fimbriae of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) are highly stable multimeric structures with a capacity to evoke mucosal immune responses. With these characters F4 offer a unique model system to study oral vaccination against ETEC-induced porcine postweaning diarrhea. Postweaning diarrhea is a major problem in piggeries worldwide and results in significant economic losses. No vaccine is currently available to protect weaned piglets against ETEC infections. Transgenic plants provide an economically feasible platform for large-scale production of vaccine antigens for animal health. In this study, the capacity of transgenic plants to produce FaeG protein, the major structural subunit and adhesin of F4 fimbria, was evaluated. Using the model plant tobacco, the optimal subcellular location for FaeG accumulation was examined. Targeting of FaeG into chloroplasts offered a superior accumulation level of 1% of total soluble proteins (TSP) over the other investigated subcellular locations, namely, the endoplasmic reticulum and the apoplast. Moreover, we determined whether the FaeG protein, when isolated from its fimbrial background and produced in a plant cell, would retain the key properties of an oral vaccine, i.e. stability in gastrointestinal conditions, binding to porcine intestinal F4 receptors (F4R), and inhibition of the F4-possessing (F4+) ETEC attachment to F4R. The chloroplast-derived FaeG protein did show resistance against low pH and proteolysis in the simulated gastrointestinal conditions and was able to bind to the F4R, subsequently inhibiting the F4+ ETEC binding in a dose-dependent manner. To investigate the oral immunogenicity of FaeG protein, the edible crop plant alfalfa was transformed with the chloroplast-targeting construct and equally to tobacco plants, a high-yield FaeG accumulation of 1% of TSP was obtained. A similar yield was also obtained in the seeds of barley, a valuable crop plant, when the FaeG-encoding gene was expressed under an endosperm-specific promoter and subcellularly targeted into the endoplasmic reticulum. Furthermore, desiccated alfalfa plants and barley grains were shown to have a capacity to store FaeG protein in a stable form for years. When the transgenic alfalfa plants were administred orally to weaned piglets, slight F4-specific systemic and mucosal immune responses were induced. Co-administration of the transgenic alfalfa and the mucosal adjuvant cholera toxin enhanced the F4-specific immune response; the duration and number of F4+ E. coli excretion following F4+ ETEC challenge were significantly reduced as compared with pigs that had received nontransgenic plant material. In conclusion, the results suggest that transgenic plants producing the FaeG subunit protein could be used for production and delivery of oral vaccines against porcine F4+ ETEC infections. The findings here thus present new approaches to develop the vaccination strategy against porcine postweaning diarrhea.

Revision of the family Alycidae (Acariformes, Acari), with special reference to European species

The thesis provides a proposal to divide Alycidae G. Canestrini & Fanzago into two subfamilies and four tribes. This new hierarchy is based on a reassessment and reranking of new and previously known synapomorphies of the clusters concerned by cladistic analysis, using 60 morphological characters for 48 ingroup species. The basic characters of the taxa are illustrated either by SEM micrographs (Scanning Electron Microscopy) or by outline drawings. The presented classification includes the definitions of Alycini G. Canestrini & Fanzago new rank; Bimichaeliini Womersley new rank; Petralycini new rank; and the (re)descriptions of Alycus C.L. Koch, Pachygnathus Dugès, Amphialycus Zachvatkin, Bimichaelia Thor and Laminamichaelia gen. nov. The species described or redescribed are: Pachygnathus wasastjernae sp. nov. from Kvarken (Merenkurkku), Finland; Pachygnathus villosus Dugès (in Oken); Alycus roseus C.L. Koch; Alycus denasutus (Grandjean) comb. and stat. nov.; Alycus trichotus (Grandjean) comb. nov.; Alycus marinus (Schuster) comb. nov.; Amphialycus (Amphialycus) pentophthalmus Zachvatkin; Amphialycus (Amphialycus) leucogaster (Grandjean); and Amphialycus (Orthacarus) oblongus (Halbert) comb. nov.; Bimichaelia augustana (Berlese); Bimichaelia sarekensis Trägårdh; Laminamichaelia setigera (Berlese) comb. nov.; Laminamichelia arbusculosa (Grandjean) comb. nov.; Laminamichelia subnuda (Berlese) comb. nov. and Petralycus unicornis Grandjean. Fourteen nominal species were found to be junior synonymies. The importance of sensory organs in taxonomy is well recognized, but inclusion of the elaborate skin pattern seemed to improve essentially the usefulness of the prodorsal sensory area. The detailed pictures of the prodorsa of the European alycids could be used like passport photographs for the species. A database like this of prodorsa of other mite taxa as well might be an answer to future needs of species identification in soil zoology, ecology and conservation.

Running Men

In this multi-screen installation, iconic male characters from Hollywood films are reconfigured to create infinitely looping scenes of running; trapping the characters in a kind of Nietchzen eternal recurrence. Stemming primarily from my investigation into anxiety as a shared social experience, the carefully edited, looped, and rotoscoped characters become avatars or surrogates for myself, and for the viewer. Through this editing, they are caught in a space of relentless confusion and paranoia – they run with, and from, anxiety. They are never caught by any unseen pursuers, but are equally unable to catch up to any unseen goal. These figures act as models of masculinity, they are objects of identification and emulation. Simultaneously, as celebrities, they are also fictions of the media sphere, both real and ethereal, they are impossible to grasp. In this duality, the work also references cinema’s tangled conflation of character and celebrity identity. It examines the subjective and intersubjective engagements we can have with popular culture, and the way that these engagements can as strategies to ‘make sense’ of social experiences. The work was exhibited in the Carriageworks space of ‘You Imagine What You Desire’, the 19th Biennale of Sydney.

Dialog

This work, commissioned by Campbelltown Arts Centre, was created as part of an online residency in Western Sydney. The residency took the form of an online survey of students in Western Sydney schools that queried participants on their favourite moments, characters and dialogue from film and television. Using this information as a starting point, the work used appropriated footage to weave together a 6-way cross-screen conversation. Spouting occasionally recognizable phrases that then devolve into meaningless cliché, the narrative content of this fragmented back-and-forth hovers somewhere in between familiarity and non-sense.

Conditions of Compromise and Failure (The Dickensian Aspect)

‘Conditions of Compromise and Failure (The Dickensian Aspect)' acts as a re-enactment of the common trope of television detective dramas. A result of the artist’s repeated immersions in the television program ‘The Wire’, the work forms a node-map of all the named characters featured on the show. While each coloured thread represents and connects together the Byzantine narrative between all of the characters, the sheer mass of connections obfuscates any clear reading at all.

Running men: The precarious, paranoid body in screen culture

This paper discusses my video installation Running Men as an example of how an artist’s appropriative engagements with screen images of the perilous body can reflect the technological zeitgeist of the last hundred years but also create a space of meditative and mediated reflection in Slavoj Žižek’s “endlessness” of the present-future. In this artwork, iconic male characters from Hollywood films are recontextualised to create infinitely looping scenes of running; trapping the characters in a kind of Nietchzen eternal recurrence that suspends them between impending violence and uncertain futures. Stemming primarily from my investigation into anxiety as a shared social experience, one perhaps primed by the increasing intensity of visual culture in the 21st century, these digitally reconfigured bodies become avatars or surrogates for myself, and for the viewer. Through selective editing, these emblematic figures are caught in a space of relentless confusion and paranoia – they run with, and from anxiety. They are never caught by any unseen pursuers, but are equally unable to catch up to any unseen goal. These figures map an historical trajectory of violence and masculinity as it has been projected through various iterations of screen culture Simultaneously, as celebrities, they are also fictions of the media sphere, both real and ethereal, they are impossible to grasp but paradoxically are objects of identification and emulation. In this duality, the work also references cinema’s tangled conflation of character and celebrity identity. This discussion will address the two distinct but connected sites and activities of body/image engagement. Firstly, the artistic process and conceptual ramifications of this activity, and secondly in the artwork’s potential as an installation to provide an opportunity for the viewer (like the artist) to reflect on the constructed-ness and complicated power structures at play in the representation of a gendered body.

The family Herbertaceae and its novel systematic position within liverworts

Taxonomic relationships of the liverwort genus Herbertus in Asia were examined. In addition, the phylogeny of the family Herbertaceae and its close relatives was investigated and analyses conducted of higher level relationships within the entire liverwort phylum. Species of Herbertus show great plasticity in various morphological characters, resulted in a large number of described species. This study was the first comprehensive revision of Asian Herbertus, with 12 species recognized for the continent. Eleven names were reduced to synonymy under earlier described species, and one species was excluded from the genus. Herbertus buchii Juslén was described as a new species. Phylogenetic analyses based on both molecular and morphological characters resolved the families Vetaformaceae, Lepicoleaceae, and Herbertaceae (including Mastigophoraceae) as a monophyletic entity. This clade is among the most derived groups within the leafy liverworts and comprises mostly isophyllous plants, all of which have bracteolar antheridia. The relationships of Mastigophoraceae have formerly been controversial. My results confirm the view that this family is closely related to Herbertaceae, Lepicoleaceae, and Vetaformaceae. In the proposed new classification Mastigophoraceae is included in Herbertaceae. Phylogenetic relationships within the liverworts were reconstructed using both chloroplast and nuclear sequences as well as morphological characters. These analyses were the most comprehensive to date at the time of publication. Previously it was believed that liverworts had a common ancestor with an erect, radial gametophyte and a tetrahedral apical cell. The leafy liverworts were arranged based on the assumption that similar structures had repeatedly developed in many different suborders, with evolution proceeding from erect and isophyllous to creeping and anisophyllous plants. The complex thalloid liverworts were assumed to be the most derived group. By contrast, our studies resolved a clade comprising Treubia and Haplomitrium as the earliest extant liverwort lineage. According to our results the complex thalloids are also an early diverging lineage, and the simple thalloids, traditionally classified together, are a paraphyletic group. Within leafy liverworts, the hypothesis of repeated evolution from isophyllous to anisophyllous plants based on the assumption of a basal unresolved polytomy was rejected. Fundamentally, the leafy liverworts can be divided into three groups. In conflict with the earlier hypotheses, the isophyllous liverworts, including Herbertaceae, were resolved as derived lineages within the liverworts.

Distribution of non-biting midges (Diptera, Chironomidae) in subarctic lakes of Finnish Lapland applications in lake classification and palaeolimnology

Climate change contributes directly or indirectly to changes in species distributions, and there is very high confidence that recent climate warming is already affecting ecosystems. The Arctic has already experienced the greatest regional warming in recent decades, and the trend is continuing. However, studies on the northern ecosystems are scarce compared to more southerly regions. Better understanding of the past and present environmental change is needed to be able to forecast the future. Multivariate methods were used to explore the distributional patterns of chironomids in 50 shallow (≤ 10m) lakes in relation to 24 variables determined in northern Fennoscandia at the ecotonal area from the boreal forest in the south to the orohemiarctic zone in the north. Highest taxon richness was noted at middle elevations around 400 m a.s.l. Significantly lower values were observed from cold lakes situated in the tundra zone. Lake water alkalinity had the strongest positive correlation with the taxon richness. Many taxa had preference for lakes either on tundra area or forested area. The variation in the chironomid abundance data was best correlated with sediment organic content (LOI), lake water total organic carbon content, pH and air temperature, with LOI being the strongest variable. Three major lake groups were separated on the basis of their chironomid assemblages: (i) small and shallow organic-rich lakes, (ii) large and base-rich lakes, and (iii) cold and clear oligotrophic tundra lakes. Environmental variables best discriminating the lake groups were LOI, taxon richness, and Mg. When repeated, this kind of an approach could be useful and efficient in monitoring the effects of global change on species ranges. Many species of fast spreading insects, including chironomids, show a remarkable ability to track environmental changes. Based on this ability, past environmental conditions have been reconstructed using their chitinous remains in the lake sediment profiles. In order to study the Holocene environmental history of subarctic aquatic systems, and quantitatively reconstruct the past temperatures at or near the treeline, long sediment cores covering the last 10000 years (the Holocene) were collected from three lakes. Lower temperature values than expected based on the presence of pine in the catchment during the mid-Holocene were reconstructed from a lake with great water volume and depth. The lake provided thermal refuge for profundal, cold adapted taxa during the warm period. In a shallow lake, the decrease in the reconstructed temperatures during the late Holocene may reflect the indirect response of the midges to climate change through, e.g., pH change. The results from three lakes indicated that the response of chironomids to climate have been more or less indirect. However, concurrent shifts in assemblages of chironomids and vegetation in two lakes during the Holocene time period indicated that the midges together with the terrestrial vegetation had responded to the same ultimate cause, which most likely was the Holocene climate change. This was also supported by the similarity in the long-term trends in faunal succession for the chironomid assemblages in several lakes in the area. In northern Finnish Lapland the distribution of chironomids were significantly correlated with physical and limnological factors that are most likely to change as a result of future climate change. The indirect and individualistic response of aquatic systems, as reconstructed using the chironomid assemblages, to the climate change in the past suggests that in the future, the lake ecosystems in the north do not respond in one predictable way to the global climate change. Lakes in the north may respond to global climate change in various ways that are dependent on the initial characters of the catchment area and the lake.

Reproduction and population structure in European aspen

The European aspen (Populus tremula) is a keystone species for biodiversity in boreal forests. However, the future of aspen may be threatened, because large aspens have mostly been removed from managed forests, whereas regeneration and the long-term persistence of mature trees are subjects of concern in protected areas. Aspen is a pioneer tree, and it can reproduce both sexually by seed and asexually by root suckers. Through asexual reproduction aspen forms clones, groups of genetically identical trees (ramets). In my thesis, I have studied the structure of aspen populations in terms of number, size, clonal and demographic properties. Additionally, I have investigated the emergence and survival of seedlings as well as the seed quantity and quality in crosses between the European and hybrid aspen. To study the regeneration and population structure, mature aspens were recorded in old-growth and managed forests in eastern Finland based on a large-scale inventory (11 400 ha). In addition, small aspen trees were surveyed on sample plots. Clonal structure was investigated both by morphological characters and by DNA-based markers (microsatellites). Seedling emergence and survival was studied with two sowing experiments. With crosses between European and hybrid aspens we wanted to study whether elevated temperatures due to climate change would benefit the different crosses of European and hybrid aspen unequally and thus affect the gene flow between the two species. The average volumes of mature aspen were 5.3 m3/ha in continuous old-growth, and 0.8 m3/ha in managed forests. Results indicate also that large aspen trees in managed forests are a legacy of the past less intensively managed forest landscapes. Long-term persistence of aspen in protected areas can only be secured by restoration measures creating sufficiently large gaps for regeneration. More emphasis should be given to sparing aspens in thinnings and to retaining of mature aspens in regeneration cutting in managed forests. Aspen was found to be spatially aggregated in the landscape. This could be explained by site type, disturbance history and / or limitations in seed dispersal. Clonal structure does not explain the spatial aggregation, since average size of the clones was only 2.3 ramets, and most clones (70 %) consisted of just one ramet. The small size of the clones suggests that most of them are relatively young. Therefore, sexual reproduction may be more common than has previously been thought. Seedling emergence was most successful in mineral soil especially, when the site had been burned. Only few seedlings occurred on humus. Survival of the seedlings was low, and strongly dependent on moisture, but also on seedbed conditions. The seeds were found to maintain their germinability longer than has earlier been thought to be possible. Interspecific crosses produced more seeds with higher quality than intraspecific crosses. When temperature was elevated, germination of hybrid aspen seeds increased more than seeds from P. tremula x P. tremula crosses. These results suggest that hybrid aspen may have a significant genetic impact on the European aspen, and this effect may become strengthened by climate warming.