This article draws upon the remarkable diaries of Vojtěch Berger
to offer an original perspective on left-wing politics and the transformative effects of war, occupation, and violence in early twentieth-century Central Europe. Berger, a trained carpenter from southern Bohemia, began writing a diary at the turn of the century when he was a member of the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Party in Vienna. He continued to write as he fought for the Habsburg monarchy during World War I; moved to Prague and joined the Communist Party; endured the Nazi occupation; and questioned the
Communist Party, and his place in it, after liberation in 1945. Berger’s diary speaks to two constituencies that deserve more attention from historians: Czech-speaking veterans of World War I and rank-and-file members of the interwar Communist Party. The article argues that Berger’s politics, while informed by his experiences and framed by party ideologies and structures,
obtained significance through relationships with like-minded “comrades”. Furthermore, the article examines how Berger used his diary to create political self-understanding, to fashion a political self. Each world war, the article concludes, threw this sense of self into disarray. Each world war also spurred Berger to reshape his political self, and with that to reconstitute his political beliefs, his public relationships, and his sense of belonging in the world. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou
A new species Wardium paucispinosum (Eucestoda: Hymenolepididae) parasite from the intestine of Larus maculipennis (Lichtenstein) from Mar del Plata, Argentina is described. The distinctive features of the new species are: strobilar length 52.8 mm; 10 aploparaksoid rostellar hooks, 14 (12-17) pm long; ratio between cirrus pouch length and mature proglottid width (CPL/MPW) 0.38 (0.27-0.50); regular cylindrical evaginated cirrus, 90 x 10 pm, with distal end without spines and proximal and medium thirds covered with spines 7 pm long; simple tubular membranous vagina, 110 x 10 pm, without sclcrotised portions and sphincters; eggs fusiform, 77 x 44 pm. Besides, llymenolepis semiductilis Szidat, 1964, from the intestine of Larus dominicanus and L. maculipennis from Santa Fé, Argentina is transferred to the genus Wardium Mayhew, 1925, based on the presence and shape of the rostellar hooks.
The paper evaluates changes in the water temperature of the Vistula River – one of the longest rivers in Europe. Mean monthly and annual water temperatures from the period 1971–2017 for 11 stations along the entire length of the river revealed the increasing trends. The mean increase in water temperature in the analysed multi-annual period was 0.31 °C dec–1. In the majority of analysed stations, the key factor determining changes in the water temperature of the river was air temperature. The observed water warming in the Vistula River should be considered an exceptionally unfavourable situation in the context of importance of water temperature for a number of processes and phenomena occurring in river ecosystems. Given the scale of changes, fast measures should be undertaken to slow down the warming.
Herbivorous insects are often highly specialised, likely due to trade-offs in fitness on alternative host species. However, some pest insects are extremely adaptable and readily adopt novel hosts, sometimes causing rapid expansion of their host range as they spread from their original host and geographic origin. The genetic basis of this phenomenon is poorly understood, limiting our ability to predict or mitigate global insect pest outbreaks. We investigated the trajectory of early adaptation to novel hosts in a regionally-specialised global crop pest species (the cowpea seed beetle Callosobruchus maculatus). After experimentally-enforced dietary specialisation for nearly 300 generations, we measured changes in fitness over the first 5 generations of adaptation to 6 novel hosts. Of these, C. maculatus reproduced successfully on all but one, with reduced fitness observed on three hosts in the first generation. Loss of fitness was followed by very rapid, decelerating increases in fitness over the first 1-5 generations, resulting in comparable levels of population fitness to that observed on the original host after 5 generations. Heritability of fitness on novel hosts was high. Adaptation occurred primarily via changes in behavioural and phenological traits, and never via changes in offspring survival to adulthood, despite high heritability for this trait. These results suggest that C. maculatus possesses ample additive genetic variation for very rapid host shifts, despite a prolonged period of enforced specialization, and also suggest that some previously-inferred environmental maternal effects on host use may in part actually represent (rapidly) evolved changes. We highlight the need to examine in more detail the genetic architecture facilitating retention of high additive genetic variation for host shifts in extremely adaptable global crop pests., Thomas N. Price, Aoife Leonard, Lesley T. Lancaster., and Obsahuje bibliografii