Hendrix College

Plastic pollution has reached the remote terrestrial ecosystems of Antarctica, but the extent to which microplastics are affecting native terrestrial invertebrates has not been assessed. Using Antarctica's only endemic insect, the chironomid midge Belgica antarctica, as a focal species, the objectives of this study were two-fold: 1) Investigate the physiological consequences of polyethylene microplastic exposure in a laboratory setting and 2) Determine the extent to which field-collected larvae contain ingested microplastics. We exposed B. antarctica larvae to ingestible polyethylene microplastic beads (∼27-45 μm diameter) at various concentrations (up to 2000 mg kg^-1 substrate) for 10 days. Ingestion of beads was only observed at the two highest concentrations, and survival and metabolic rates were unchanged across all concentrations. While carbohydrates and proteins stores were unaffected by plastic exposure, lipid stores tended to decrease with increasing plastics concentration. For Objective 2, field-collected larvae from 13 islands were screened for microplastics with two approaches, either imaging digestive samples with μ-FTIR and μ-Raman microscopy or spotting digested guts onto glass filters and scanning with μ-Raman. While the latter approach was inconclusive, two of the 29 larvae (7 %) imaged with μ-FTIR had potential plastics, and one of these particles was confirmed as plastic using μ-Raman. Thus, the presence of plastics in larvae is likely rare at present, although our results do provide further evidence that microplastics can enter Antarctic food webs. Taken together, our results indicate that high concentrations of plastics can have physiological consequences, although it appears unlikely that these levels are currently approached in the field.

Starting in the summer of 2019, a series of events saw queer Palestinians taking to the streets and appearing in mainstream Palestinian culture and media at an unprecedented scale. Drawing on 53 interviews with queer Palestinians, activists and nonactivists, this article critiques the queer organizing around these events as it appears in the two largest queer Palestinian organizations alQaws and Aswat. Because most research and activism on queer life in Palestine centers either the decolonial discourse against "homonationalism" within the Israeli nation-state expansion project and the Palestinian queer opposition to it, or the anti-orientalist critique of Western interventionist internationalization of queer rights, participants' opinions and lived experiences challenge the scholarly and grassroot organizing tendency to ignore queer lives and voices who believe that targeting the sociocultural aspects of their queerness is an equally viable strategy for creating change. In doing so, this article sheds a new light on the clashing sociocultural and decolonial approaches-whereby clash refers to the debates regarding the ideologies and practices Palestinian activists and scholars find most ideal for their queer liberation.

Salt marshes of the northern Gulf of Mexico provide many ecosystem services, including supporting some of the USA’s most productive fisheries. Early work identified links between salt marsh area and commercial shrimp landings, while more recent research highlighted the importance of marsh edge. Many species appear to be restricted to the outer few meters of the vegetated marsh even when large areas are flooded for extended periods. We hypothesized that low dissolved oxygen (DO), driven by high respiration rates, may limit more extensive use of flooded marsh. To evaluate this, we continuously logged DO 5 cm above the substrate along transects at 10, 5, and 1 m into open water adjacent to the marsh edge and at 1, 5, and 10 m into the flooded marsh, for 48+ h periods at 10 sites in Mississippi Sound, AL, during the summer of 2024. DO levels 10 and 5 m into the flooded marsh regularly dropped to stressful levels (< 4 mg/L), often becoming hypoxic (< 2 mg/L) for periods of several hours. In addition to predictable diurnal DO cycles, we identified precipitous drops in DO on the flooded marsh surface around midday at some sites, coinciding with the beginning of the ebb tide. This suggests that even during bright sunny conditions, respiration can exceed aquatic photosynthesis in the shallow flooded marsh. Our findings suggest that much of the flooded marsh may be physiologically stressful for many aquatic species. Increasing temperatures and nutrient loads in our coastal waters will further exacerbate poor DO conditions and may degrade the suitability of this essential fish habitat.