The evolution of myrmicine ants: phylogeny and biogeography of a hyperdiverse ant clade (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
Summary (5 min read)
Prevalence and Consequences of IPV
- Studies have shown that violence against women is extensive.
- In a World Health Organization (WHO) multi-country study investigating women’s health and experiences of domestic violence, women from 10 Asian, European, African, and South-American countries were interviewed.
- In a similar survey conducted in the United States in 1995/96, 20.4% of the women and 7.0% of the men reported physical assault by a current or former opposite-sex partner during their lifetime (Tjalden & Thoennes, 2000).
- Both physical and psychological IPV are associated with significant physical and mental health consequences in both male and female victims (Campbell, 2002; Coker et al., 2002).
- Because women appear to be more exposed to severe physical IPV than men, women have a higher risk of poor health.
Intimate Partner Violence
- Different terms, such as domestic violence, family violence, battering, interpersonal violence and spousal abuse, are often used in the field of IPV (Devaney & Lazenbatt, 2016).
- The different concepts are employed interchangeably even though they stem from different theoretical orientations (ibid.).
- Furthermore, IPV refers to psychological/emotional violence, such as threats, harassment, humiliation, and controlling the partner’s activities, and property violence, such as hitting the wall/door and destroying objects.
- Repeated violent acts and the breaking of the promise that ‘it will never happen again’ are clear violations of positive masculinity.
- Furthermore, the interaction and dynamics of a violent intimate relationship, accounting for violent acts perpetrated by both parties, have been examined (Johnson, 2006; Johnson & Leone, 2005).
Theoretical Models of IPV
- Scholars have proposed a variety of theoretical models explaining the occurrence of IPV and the best methods to respond and stop the use of violence.
- The individual model clearly constructs IPV as a clinical phenomenon.
- When tasked with developing therapeutic approaches that successfully engage these men in therapy, drawing upon all three models is useful.
- The authors need to explore/understand the way in which the male client with his difficulties and recourses tries to construct himself as a man in relation to his female partner.
The State of Knowledge in Therapy for Men Perpetrating IPV
- Most published studies investigating IPV interventions are conducted based on group programs (Babcock et al., 2004).
- Another limitation of alliance studies in the field of IPV therapy is that several studies rely on a third party’s (the partner) perception of change rather than on the client’s report.
- These studies have provided evidence that the client’s perception of the alliance is important for the outcome of therapy.
- Furthermore, a study involving 107 mostly court-mandated men found that the therapist’s, but not the client’s, early ratings of the alliance predicted certain types of post-treatment abuse as reported by the female partners (Taft et al., 2003).
- To obtain more knowledge regarding the risk factors of dropping out, client characteristics, such as demographic variables, and violence-related and intrapersonal factors have been studied (Daly & Pelowski, 2000).
Understanding How IPV Individual Therapy Leads to Change
- As outlined above, outcome studies investigating IPV therapy do not appear to offer much information regarding the effect of therapy.
- The therapist must look beyond the client’s strategies of defense and search for the client’s needs that can identify a common ground to change their violent behavior.
- 18 The second pathway of the alliance focuses on the client’s expectations of being able to cope with and solve the problems that brought him to therapy.
- Studies investigating the significance of an early alliance and the high dropout rate in IPV therapy suggest that exploring the events that occur between the client and the therapist during the first few sessions is warranted.
Population of the ATV Therapy Study
- During the inclusion period, 222 men contacted the clinics and were assigned to an intake assessment.
- Forty-two men allowed the researchers to study their intake data but did not approve to participate in the process and outcome study.
- According to this definition, 29 (34.5%) clients dropped out of individual therapy.
- Fifteen therapists participated in the process and outcome study.
- All therapists were clinical psychologists who were trained and skilled in IPV therapy.
Measurements
- The perpetration of violence was measured using the VAS-client and VAS-partner Questionnaire (Strandmoen et al., 2016).
- During the post-treatment assessment of the outcome, both the client (at T3) and the partner (at T2 and T3) were asked to shortly describe the client changes or lack of changes after participating in therapy.
- The therapy process was captured by audio recordings of all therapy sessions.
Findings from the Assessment Data
- The findings of two international papers (Askeland & Heir, 2014; Strandmoen et al., 2016) and one Norwegian report (Askeland, Lømo, Strandmoen, Heir, & Tjersland, 2012) based on data from intake assessments (N= 184) have been published.
- These studies describe the different aspects of the male clients.
- Most men reported having perpetrated physical violence against their partners.
- Moreover, 70% of the men qualified for one or more psychiatric diagnoses as measured by 22 the MINI, and the main diagnoses included anxiety, depression, and alcohol/substance abuse (Askeland & Heir, 2014).
The Qualitative Process Study of Individual IPV Therapy
- In the process and outcome study, 84 men participated in one or more individual therapy sessions.
- The selection procedures are further described in the method section.
- The final aim was to integrate the findings regarding the early alliance formation and in-session client change during the course of therapy to determine whether a model of personal change can be developed to facilitate interventions in IPV therapy and guide clinicians in their in-session decision making in this specific field (Levitt, Butler, & Hill, 2006; McLeod, 2013).
- In addition to the trustworthiness of the results, the generalizability of the results must be considered.
Data Selection for the Qualitative Process Study
- The data explored in the in-session inquiry included both quantitative and qualitative data of therapy cases collected in the ATV Therapy study.
- Therefore, in this overview, the rationale underlying the strategies used to sample the cases and sessions for the three analyses is discussed.
- To ensure that the initial alliance formed in these cases was viable in terms of a good outcome, I selected cases in which the clients at the end of therapy (T2) reported either no perpetration of violence or a considerable reduction in the types and frequency of violent acts in addition to a reliable change on the OQ-45.
- The final criterion used to select the cases was the number of sessions attended.
- The audio recordings of the therapy sessions were conducted using a small digital recorder, which provided an opportunity to examine what actually occurred between the therapist and the client.
Data Analysis
- The three data analyses were conducted in collaboration with Professor Hanne Haavind and Professor Odd Arne Tjersland.
- The first author took the lead in the analytical work and met with each of the two other authors separately and jointly for comparisons and discussions of the interpretations.
- I attempted to stay close to the phenomenon of ‘in-session interaction and change’ by analyzing each case from an inductive position, seeking to comprehend the interactions between the client and therapist and the personal relevance to each specific client.
- These authors independently studied the transcribed sessions and the summaries of the sessions for one case using the aforementioned inductive analytical questions as a basis.
- The coherent narratives of the courses of therapy were then evaluated against the initial coding of each therapy session to ensure that their construction of the therapy process was consistent with the content and process of each session.
Reflexivity
- A common characteristic of all interpretive methods is that the researcher brings her/his conscious and unconscious preconceptions into the process of analyzing the data.
- Reflecting on how one’s preconceptions are reinforced, extended or challenged in the process of data analysis and explaining one’s horizon of understanding to the audience (Rennie, 2000) may limit any biased effect of the researcher’s positions.
- I had selected the cases and could recognize the therapists’ voices when listening to the audio recordings.
- On the basis of this position, I assumed that the dominating language used to describe how male clients deny, minimalize, and rationalize their violent acts could negatively affect the alliance formation process.
- In the following two analyses, my attention was drawn to how the therapist and client, with a special focus on the therapist, interacted to create meaning that could lead to a working alliance and to client change.
Ethical Considerations
- The overall process and outcome study was approved by the Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Ethics (Region South-East) and the Norwegian Social Science Data Services.
- The second gateway was the client’s notions of change.
- In the pull-avoid interaction, the therapists engaged the client in describing the violence, provided a voice for those affected by the abuse, noted the clients’ resources and persuaded a correct goal and task for therapy.
- Because these strategies are grounded in empirical data, these strategies can be considered principles of change in IPV therapy.
- In the following sections, I first elaborate on how the conceptual model of gateways and invitations and the model of therapist responsiveness to finding common ground shed light on the theoretical concepts of expectations of therapy, problem formulations, and agreement on goals and tasks.
Untangling the Phenomenon of Alliance Formation in IPV Therapy
- According to the contextual model of how the alliance works to create change in psychotherapy, the first step in forming an alliance is the establishment of the initial therapeutic bond (Wampold and Budge, 2012; Wampold & Imel, 2015).
- After adding the analysis of the therapist’s responsiveness to the client’s invitations, the findings illustrate that the therapist’s strategy affected the process of alliance formation in certain cases independently of the strength of the client’s invitations.
- To find a common ground, considering the client’s violent behavior as his personal problem rather than violence as unwanted behavior to get rid of or something else became a crucial endeavor from the very beginning of the therapeutic interaction.
- To increase the clients’ expectation of therapy, it appears important for therapists to construct the client’s problem in a way that he can recognize and find relevant (Kjøs & Oddli, 2013).
- Even therapists skilled and trained in IPV therapy attempted to persuade their clients to agree to therapeutic goals and tasks or tiptoed carefully around the topic of violence to establish an initial alliance—actions that reveal the challenge of identifying and agreeing on client-specific goals in this field.
Principles of Change in IPV Therapy
- Theoretical models of why IPV occurs are often, but not always, supported by empirical evidence (Devaney & Lazenbatt, 2016).
- Graphically, the first study showed a smooth but gradual progression along the stage continuum, whereas in the latter study, progression was described as a saw-tooth pattern, which might resemble the pattern of repetitions in the analysis of the in-session changes.
- This therapist strategy could be considered an example of therapists following the client’s stage as described by Glick et al. (2000).
- The two parties together create an interaction and a dialog that help the client consider his likely actions in everyday life by stepping away from the activity and reflecting upon and becoming aware of his intentions and the process through which he loses this awareness.
Limitations and Future Research
- The present study analyzed interactions between men entering IPV therapy voluntarily and therapists who were trained and experienced in IPV therapy.
- Furthermore, it is important to note that the recipients in this study are practitioners, and the selection of cases was assumed to be highly relevant for therapists.
- Additionally, an analysis of completed long-term cases that did not achieve a good outcome as a contrast to the three cases already analyzed could both strengthen and nuance the model outlined.
- Such similar but 54 contrasting cases are suitable for deepening their understanding of change processes in IPV therapy Furthermore, to select data that are suitable for informing their research questions, the authors leaned on clients’ and therapists’ reflexive notes on the helpfulness of the sessions and the clients’ and partners’ descriptions of the client changes at T2 and T3.
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Frequently Asked Questions (10)
Q2. What other genera are not strongly associated with the Myrmicinae?
Other apparently isolated genera, not strongly associated with particular taxa, include Dacetinops, Kartidris, Lophomyrmex, Mayriella, Nesomyrmex, Tetheamyrma and Xenomyrmex.
Q3. How many generations did the ML analysis achieve stationarity?
For the full concatenated dataset, stationarity was regularly obtained within the first few million generations, even for the various base-frequency-heterogeneity treatments; single-gene analyses achieved stationarity within the first few hundred thousand generations.
Q4. How many outgroup taxa were drawn from the other subfamilies of ants?
The authors included 17 outgroup taxa; these were drawn mostly from the other subfamilies of ants, but the authors also chose an aculeate hymenopteran wasp, Apterogyna (Bradynobaenidae), as the most distant outgroup to root the tree.
Q5. How many bp were used in the matrix?
The resulting matrix that was used for all subsequent analyses contains 8987 bp (3558 variable sites, 2895 parsimony-informative sites).
Q6. How many sequences were generated for this study?
Of the 2761 fragments, 499 were previously published (Ward & Downie, 2005; Brady et al., 2006; Ward, 2007a; Branstetter, 2009; Lucky & Sarnat, 2010; Ward et al., 2010; Brady et al., 2014); the remaining 2262 sequences were generated for this study (GenBank accession numbers KJ859686-KJ861947).
Q7. What is the likely tree to be a member of the Myrmicinae?
The Ankylomyrma/Tatuidris clade has very strong support (PP 1.00 BS 100) and the results of the constraint analysis reveal that the most likely tree in which Tatuidris and Ankylomyrma are constrained to be members of the Myrmicinae has a likelihood that is lower than that of the unconstrained topology by a difference of 358.66 natural-log likelihood units, translating to a highly significant Bayes Factor of 717.32 (Nylander et al., 2004).
Q8. What is the phylogenetic status of the tetramoriines?
The authors identify a clade (PP 1.00 BS 100) composed of Calyptomyrmex, Vollenhovia and an undescribed genus from the Philippines, as sister to the tetramoriines, with moderate support (PP 1.00 BS 86).
Q9. What is the sister group of Pheidole?
The sister group of Pheidole appears to be the turtle ants, or Cephalotes genus-group (PP 0.99 BS 58 for the more inclusive clade, PP 1.00 BS 100 for the Cephalotes genus-group), a rather surprising finding in view of the morphological discrepancy between these two groups.
Q10. What is the proposal to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature?
To avoid upsetting general usage by permanently expanding the definition of Attini, the authors are in the process of proposing to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature the substitution of the junior tribal synonym Pheidolini for Attini.