Can’t Afford the Manolos? Buy the Book!: Chick Lit & Contemporary Consumerism

At the airport, across from the magazines at Wal-Mart, and probably somewhere near the front of local bookstores — chick lit is everywhere. One would probably recognize it from a distance as a sea of shiny pink1, the small glossy paperbacks cheerfully beckoning from their carefully constructed display. Chick lit has exploded into the western2 market over the last decade, captivating millions of readers with their tales of young, urban professional women navigating the worlds of careers, relationships, and of course, shopping. By the end of the novel, each of these components is generally resolved in somewhat formulaic fashion

A Pollen Chase Experiment; Examining Varying Levels of Embryonic Inbreeding Depression

A pollen chase experiment was performed upon three Costa Rican populations of Witheringia solanacea to examine the breakdown of genetically enforced self incompatibility (SI) and the extent of embryonic inbreeding depression. Self-pollen was applied in the bud, with outcross pollen applied one day later, and outcross pollinations at both intervals as a control. A variety of responses were found among the populations. BOHS readily accepted self pollen and suffered from very low inbreeding depression. Monteverde and Las Cruces both have lower fruit set with self-pollination precedence indicating that bud pollinations can overcome the self-incompatibility response and that embryonic death due to inbreeding depression causes fruit failure. The treatment:control fruit set is higher for the Las Cruces plants indicating stronger SI response Self-precedence seeds from the Las Cruces plants are likely to be outcrossed. Self-precedence seeds from Monteverde are likely selfed.