Manchester Metropolitan University

About: Manchester Metropolitan University is a education organization based out in Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 5435 authors who have published 16202 publications receiving 442561 citations. The organization is also known as: Manchester Polytechnic & MMU.

Ecological and biogeographical effects of forest disturbance on tropical butterflies of Sumba, Indonesia

Abstract: Butterfly assemblages within lowland monsoon forest were compared at four sites on Sumba, Indonesia that differed in terms of protection and exhibited associated differences in levels of human disturbance. A numerical method employing principal components analysis was devised for describing forest structure at each site. The first principal component (PRINI) grouped attributes tending towards dense forest with closely-spaced trees, a closed canopy and a poorly developed field layer, with trees that tended to be large with the point of inversion in the upper half of the trunk. The highest values for PRINI were recorded within protected forest, and PRINI values were considered to be a useful index of forest disturbance at each site. Species diversity of butterflies was highest in unprotected secondary forest, but was not affected by lower levels of disturbance. Those species occurring at highest density in secondary forest generally had wide geographical distributions, whereas those species occurring at highest density in undisturbed primary forest had restricted ranges of distribution, in most cases with a separate subspecies on Sumba. Overall, an index of biogeographical distinctiveness decreased with increasing disturbance, and this supports the hypothesis that the most characteristic species of undisturbed climax forest have the smallest geographical ranges of distribution. Species abundance data for butterflies fitted a log-normal distribution at all but the most disturbed site. These results indicate that the pattern of proportional abundance of tropical butterfly species may be used as an 'instantaneous' indicator of forest disturbance, and that changes in the structure of tropical forests in S.E. Asia resulting from human disturbance, even within partially-protected forest, may result in the presence of butterfly assemblages of higher species diversity but of lower biogeographical distinctiveness, and therefore of lower value in terms of the conservation of global biodiversity.

Criteria for qualitative research in psychology

Abstract: This paper, designed for supervisors of qualitative research projects, and addressed to students to enable them to think through how they may be evaluated, reviews some problems in the formulation of criteria for qualitative research in the discipline and issues that are important for the generation and paradigmatic framing of open flexible criteria. The guidelines that are presented here are developed as an attempt to explicate the parameters of criteria, rather than closing down future innovative work. Ten key points are elaborated ‘under erasure’ (that the study should be objective, valid, reliable, neutral, confirmed, definitive, established, coherent, accessible and psychological) and core principles of ‘apprenticeship’, ‘scholarship’ and ‘innovation’ are designed to open the way for good research to go beyond these criteria.