A Contested Landscape: Monuments, public memory, and post-Soviet Identity in Stavropol’, Russia

Much recent literature in cultural, political and social geography has considered the relationship between identity, memory, and the urban landscape. This paper interrogates such literature through exploring the complex materialisation of memorialisation in post-Soviet Russia. Using the example of the statue of General Alexei Ermolov in Stavropol', an analysis of the cityscape reveals interethnic tensions over differing interpretations of the life and history of the person upon whom the statue is based. The existence of a rich literature on Ermolov and the Russian colonial experience in the North Caucasus helps to explain this. The symbolic cityscape of Stavropol' plays an important role in interethnic relations in the multi-ethnic city; it is both an arena through which Russian identity is communicated with people and produced and reproduced, and an arena through which Russian citizens compete with each other for authority on historical narratives that operate at and between a number of scales. People's readings of the cityscape can reveal much about power and space in contemporary Russia.

Further evidence for cryptic north-western refugia in Europe? Mitochondrial phylogeography of the sibling species Pipistrellus pipistrellus and Pipistrellus pygmaeus

The geographic ranges of European plants and animals underwent periods of contraction and re-colonisation during the climatic oscillations of the Pleistocene. The southern Mediterranean peninsulas (Iberian, Italian and Balkan) have been considered the most likely refugia for temperate/warm adapted species. Recent studies however have revealed the existence of extra-Mediterranean refugia, including the existence of cryptic north-west European refugia during the Last Glacial Maxima (24-14.6 kyr BP). In this study we elucidated the phylogeographic history of two sibling bat species, Pipistrellus pipistrellus and P. pygmaeus in their western European range. We sequenced the highly variable mtDNA D-loop for 167 samples of P. pipistrellus (n = 99) and P. pygmaeus (n = 68) and combined our data with published sequences from 331 individuals. Using phylogenetic methodologies we assessed their biogeographic history. Our data support a single eastern European origin for populations of P. pygmaeus s.str., yet multiple splits and origins for populations of P. pipistrellus s.str., including evidence for refugia within refugia and potential cryptic refugia in north western Europe and in the Caucasus. This complex pattern in the distribution of mtDNA haplotypes supports a long history for P. pipistrellus s.str. in Europe, and the hypothesis that species with a broad ecological niche may have adapted and survived outside southern peninsula throughout the LGM.