Emerging From the Shadows : the Life of Captain John (Deserontyou), Circa 1742-1811, Founder of the Bay of Quinte Mohawk Village

This thesis is a biographical examination of the life of Mohawk leader Deserontyou (Captain John) and covers the years from the 1730's up to, and briefly following, 1811. The social, economic and political position of the Mohawk people and Deserontyou's position within the Fort Hunter community prior to the Revolution are addressed first. The Revolutionary War years are then covered with emphasis placed on Deserontyou's military role, the unpleasant conditions at Lachine and the painful reality for the Mohawk people in the aftermath of Britain's defeat. The post-war settlement on the Bay of Quinte is then explored, including the difficulties that Deserontyou experienced with the land, with the British Government, and with his own people. The documents upon which this examination are based come from many primary collections including: The Draper Manuscripts, the Haldimand Papers, the Stuart Papers, Ontario Lands & Forest Survey Records, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Episcopal Records, the Bell Papers, the File Collection, the Claus Papers and Indian Affairs Papers.

Genetic architecture and sexual conflict in the life history of Drosophila

Because males and females of a species express many homologous traits, sex-specific selection on these traits can shift the opposite sex away from its phenotypic optimum. This mode of sexually antagonistic selection, known as intralocus sexual conflict (IaSC), arises when the evolution of sexual dimorphism is constrained by the two sexes sharing a common gene pool. As IaSC has been historically overlooked, many outstanding questions remain. For example, what is its contribution in maintaining genetic variation for fitness in populations? What characters underlie this variation in fitness? How does the selection history of the population influence the standing genetic variation? I used the model organism Drosophila melanogaster to attempt to resolve some of these questions. The first part of my Master’s project involved assessing the detectability of sexually antagonistic alleles in populations at different stages of adaptation to the laboratory. For the second part of my Master’s project, I looked for evidence of conflict during the development of body size, a well-known sexually dimorphic trait. While the first part of my thesis proved inconclusive, the second part revealed a surprising source of sexual conflict in pre-adult stages of D. melanogaster.