Monthly Archives: October 2018

The 42 Negative Confessions (Excerpt from the Book of the Coming Forth by Day). Translation by E.A. Wallis Budge (Translated 1913)

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The 42 Negative Confessions are the confessions a soul must make, according to the Book of the Coming Forth by Day, or as it’s also popularly known, the Book of the Dead, before being judged before the scale of Ma’at and entering the afterlife. This brief text has a short introductory paragraph explaining what the confessions are, to whom they are given, and who the translator was. After the introduction the rest of the text is presented the confessions as they were meant to take place.

As I stated above, the confessions are those that a newly deceased soul would give before being judged by the scale of Ma’at. The text itself does not give any more illumination as to what happens if one is deemed worthy or unworthy by the scale, but does illuminate what traits were valued by Ma’at. Each confession was given to a different of the 42 Gods and Goddesses of the Nomes (a territorial division) of Egypt. There is likely some correlation as to which confession is delivered to which God or Goddess, but the sparseness of the explanatory text makes it so that a reader must have background information to know what that correlation is.

The bulk of the test takes place in the form of a numbered list wherein at each interval the “speaker” hails a new God or Goddess, calls them by their title and proclaims that they have not done a particular type of wickedness in the eyes of Ma’at; for example, I have not snatched away food, and I have not set my lips in motion against anyone. The negative confessions shed a decent amount of light on the nature of Ma’at itself; Ma’at means to be truthful, righteous, and honest. The basic concepts are familiar to anyone; it’s just the form it takes that is foreign.

The biggest question that the form of negative confessions brings to my mind is, is it good enough to not do evil, or must one do good in order to be ethical?

Community Development and Persistence in a Low Rocky Intertidal Zone. Jane Lubchenco and Bruce Menge (1978)

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Though I had to read through Community Development in a Low Rocky Intertidal Zone, in part or in full, several times before I feel I came to approach understanding, I feel the central idea is one of the more useful ones I’ve yet to read about for Ecological Thought and Practice. In the essay’s introduction the authors state that while communities have several characteristics, it is a mistake to study them as separate phenomena when in reality they are interconnected. In my notes, I wrote the following in order to clarify for myself what I was reading about: “Succession depends on competition (Connell) but also predation (Paine), dispersal rates and reproductive output (Gleason), life histories and persistence (Clements).

I think that due to their more holistic approach Lubchenco and Menge were able to add to ecological thought of the day by confirming and documenting the interactions among the ideas that their predecessors had proven. Though their results stated that “the role of consumers in determining the pattern followed during community development, or succession, seemed of overriding importance” which primarily confirms Paine’s 1966 essay, but predation, they found was largely inversely proportional to wave energy. They also documented, through denudation of patched of the rocks, the importance of dispersal and growth rates in determining which species became dominant, but because their study took place over several years, they were able to show the persistence of the communities and how quickly those patches returned to the state at which they had been before the experiment. This persistence supports Clements theory of a tendency toward climactic climax.

Today in class we were asked whether or not Connell and Paine’s studies contradicted one another, here Lubchenco and Menge showed that at least in some communities, the two ideas are both valid. I thought the reading was helpful in understanding other ideas we’ve already covered in class. The use of so many variables and controls including not only the exclusion of predators but the enclosure of predators were useful in illuminating the authors’ points.

The Influence of Interspecific Competition and Other Factors on the Distribution of the Barnacle Chthamalus Stellatus. Joseph Connell (1961)

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Upon witnessing that two species of barnacles seemed to have the adults of their species segregated into horizontal bands on a rocky intertidal shore but that the youth of the higher species could be found in the lower band with the other species, Connell set out to study the primary reason for that segregation. His theory was that the completion for space between the two species bore at least some responsibility for the separation. This theory was supported by the following studies; two species will either compete for resources with one species becoming more dominant in an area (Beauchamp and Ullyott 1932) (Kenny and Stevenson 1956), equal distribution of one species is due to that species competing primarily with itself (Holme 1950) (Clark and Evans 1954), and if two species with similar needs are living in the same area it is because they are not competing for resources (Lack 1954) (MacArthur 1958).

The method Connell used to test this theory was to map the locations of the barnacle species Chthamalus Stellatus, hereafter referred to at C.S., in the period of the year before what he hypothesized to be C.S.’s competitor Balanus Balanoides, hereafter referred to as B.B.. After mapping the locations of C.S. it was possible to control the height above or below mean tide level so that the effects of competition could be seen in environments where both C.S. and B.B. were primarily observed. One half of all clusters of C.S.  growth were kept from being interfered with by B.B.. The growth and mortality rates in each case were recorded.

The results showed that C.S. was fully capable of growing to maturity at the levels on which B.B. was typically dominant, implying that the competition for space is what was preventing C.S.’s proliferation at the lower levels. In fact, while the hypothesis was that competition was at least somewhat responsible for the distribution of the two species, the study found that predation by carnivorous aquatic snails, battery by waves, and intraspecies crowding combined were not much more likely to be responsible for the death of an individual C.S. than was crowding of some sort by B.B..

I read this essay about two hours ago and have been idly trying to come up with an example of competitors coexisting. None come to mind except in the case of lions and tigers and bears coexisting in Oz. Given this, I can’t find fault in Connell’s reasoning. His experiment took into account as many variables as I could think of and the information gained fulfilled his hypothesis without assumption. In the case of this essay the limited resource in question was space, but it is easy to imagine that if the same experiment were performed on species competing for water or a nutrient source like meat the results would show that at least some of the reason for animal dispersion was due to interspecific competition. As a follow up to this study, I would be interested to see if there were more studies done on intraspecific competition and what its causes may be.

Food Web Complexity and Species Diversity. Robert T. Paine (1966)

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In one of the most easy to interpret essays I’ve ever read, Paine states in quotes the hypothesis to be “local species diversity is directly related to the efficiency with which predators prevent the monopolization of the major environmental requisites by one species.” He goes on to say that the study he performed was on rocky, intertidal marine organisms, though the results may have wider applications.

To test his theory, Paine observed undisturbed portions of intertidal seashore rock to establish a baseline of the eating habits and caloric intake of the represented carnivorous life. In doing this, he identified what he considered to be the “terminal carnivore” or as other people might know it, the top of the food chain. The idea of the terminal carnivore is that, in each local environment, there is one animal that kills and eats without being killed and eaten. After determining the average eating habits within this environment and illustrating the food web, the environment was kept free of the terminal carnivore for a period of time, while all other factors remained natural. In the case of this study, the terminal carnivore was a species of starfish. Also represented in the food web were mollusks, carnivorous aquatic snails, herbivorous aquatic snails, and barnacles. The information on specific ratios and species may be found within the publication itself and henceforth I will be writing about the ideas and conclusions of the paper more so than data.

The results of the removal of the terminal carnivore was that within four months 60-80% of the surface area of the rock face was covered in a particular species of barnacle, six months after that that species was being crowded out by another. The system itself had decreased in diversity from a 15 species environment to an eight species environment.

The interpretation of this data was that the removal of the most efficient predator had a negative effect on the number of species living in an environment. The presence of the second most efficient carnivore, even taking into account an increase in density of up to 2,000%, did not seem to be sufficient to prevent the monopolization of space by one of the represented species, at the expense of the presence of others. In the absence of a complicating factor, in this study predation, the competition for space can be “won” by a particular species. The removal of the top predator has an outsized effect on the simplification of an environment.

The author later suggests two follow up studies. The first is to determine if resource monopolies are less frequent in areas with diversity than in similar environments with fewer represented species (an attempt to observe the results of this experiment without the human interference of artificially removing the top predator, if I understand) and to study more thoroughly the food subwebs.

When I was in AmeriCorps, one of the projects my team worked on brought us to Raccoon Creek State Park near Pittsburg, PA. While we were there, one of the park rangers gave the team a class on the local wildlife. After the class, because she was going to be working closely with us, the ranger began asking us questions about what we enjoyed doing outdoors, including asking about whom among us was a hunter. After one of the team members expressed objection to the hunting of deer, the ranger explained population control to us. Human beings had disrupted the food chain in the region three hundred years previously by hunting local wolf populations to near extinction. The wolves were competition for hunting game as well as being predacious of livestock. The result of the vast reduction in wolf population was a boom in the population of the wolves main prey, deer. As the deer population boomed, wildflower populations plummeted because they were being consumed by deer. The decline in wildflower population effected bees, which effected pollination among all sorts of vegetation, etc. As a result of all of this, the State of Pennsylvania, to this day, must release hunting licenses to keep in check the deer population.

I don’t know whether or not that park ranger ever read Robert Paine’s “Food Web Complexity and Species Diversity”, but once I realized the parallels between the two stories, I immediately understood much better what Paine was hypothesizing. I largely agree with Paine’s hypothesis and conclusions, though I’m still somewhat hesitant to agree that “in the absence of a complicating factor (predation), there is a “winner” in the competition for space, and the local system tends toward simplicity.” In this essay he admits that the area under study never reached equilibrium in the time it was under observation. My instinct leads me to believe that if the observation were extended until such a time that equilibrium were again reached the diversity may have climbed again to levels near where they were at the start of the experiment.

The Maxims of Ptahhotep . Ptahhotep (c.2500BCE)

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The Maxims of Ptahhotep was an instruction manual, not on the specific acts to take, but the behavior to exhibit if one wanted to live a successful life among the nobility of Egypt. The author implies he expects the rules for polite society to remain the same forever, stating that the rules he sets down are the reason he has been favored by god.

Though the maxims are long and poetic, many can be summed up simply in a sentence or two, and many of them have the same central conceit. Withholding my opinions for the end of this writing, I will now list several of the common themes in no particular order.

Be charitable: If you have amassed wealth, share it among your friends and neighbors; being giving with your wealth increases your reputation and the loyalty of those around you. One who is not charitable risks their friends and neighbors becoming bitter and jealous.

Stay out of drama: If two people are arguing, even if you have specifically been assigned as the judge in their case, don’t pick sides.

Listen: If someone comes to you with a problem, even if you can’t or don’t want to help solve the problem, listen to them. Just listening is often helpful on its own.

Maintain your professionalism: If a person of any social rank becomes belligerent they lose standing. Through remaining silent in these situations you gain respect.

A woman is to be controlled: You chose your wife, now you must keep her

Being well liked by your boss is paramount: Manners and flattery go a long way

Prudence: Do not act until you are sure of your actions and know the right course

The list goes on. Quite often the message is to respect authority, give good advice, and move up in the world. All maxims regarding charity come with the caveat that it is to gain influence over others. The maxims about respecting authority often advise that that is the path upward. I found almost all of the maxims to be either offensive or obvious, particularly those involving women, maxim 18 advises one not to sleep with his colleagues’ wife, maxim 21 is that the relationship between man and wife is transactional in that he keeps her fed and clothed and she gives him sexual favors.

If I hadn’t been reading this for a class I would have stopped less than half way through.