Browsing by Subject "Coexistence"

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    Commerce and coexistence: Muslims in the economy and society of Norman Sicily.
    (2009-09) Smit, Timothy James
    Sicily in the eleventh and twelfth centuries had a Muslim population under the control of Latin Christian conquerors. This dissertation aims to assess the economic role that these Muslims played in Norman Sicily, and how that economic role tied them into the society of Norman Sicily in general. Muslims in Sicily were allowed considerable autonomy and tolerance by the Christian rulers of the island, and the tolerance shown to them was always tied to their usefulness to the crown. While their role in the administration of the Regno, how Muslims served the crown in that fashion, was important, I would argue that their economic role was just as important, particularly in the early years of Norman control. With Muslims making up the majority of merchants they provided an integral service in creating the vaunted wealth of the island. Beyond the role played by the commercial elite of the cities, the more humble Muslims of the island also played a vital economic role. They were the majority of cultivators, and agriculture was always the primary source of wealth of the island. They were also involved in other kinds of production, in particular in the textile trade. Because of this, they remained important to the counts and kings of Sicily after the Normans became more established in their rule. Their economic role fueled their coexistence with the Christians of the island. With this coexistence, there were possibilities for close interactions between Christians and Muslims based on their economic role. Profit was also a powerful motivator that brought people together, and Christians and Muslims traded, even entering into partnerships and loaning money to one another. These close interactions could continue, even with the backdrop of inter-religious violence. Even the rising level of tension between Muslims and Christians could not end their mutually beneficial cross-cultural interactions. Because of these conditions in Norman Sicily, this dissertation proposes that it can serve as a case study for the role that commerce played in Christian-Muslim coexistence in the medieval Mediterranean.
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    Living with lions: spatiotemporal aspects of coexistence in savanna carnivores
    (2014-07) Swanson, Alexandra Burchard
    Top predators can suppress their smaller guild members and this can have profound consequences that cascade throughout the larger community. Suppression is mediated primarily through interference competition: (a) direct aggressive interactions, and (b) behavioral avoidance by mesopredators to minimize risks of encountering top predators. These avoidance responses can be costly, especially when they result in large-scale displacement that reduces access of the subordinate species to resources. However, fine-scale avoidance strategies may promote mesopredator persistence by minimizing risk without costly large-scale displacement. This dissertation explores the role of behavioral avoidance in driving intraguild predator dynamics. Specifically, I examine how African lions affect spotted hyenas, cheetahs, and African wild dogs in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. Long-term lion monitoring by the Serengeti Lion Project provides a high-resolution understanding of how lions interact with each other and the landscape; I deployed a large-scale camera trapping survey to collect fine-scale spatial data on the broader carnivore community. Chapter 1 reveals that although lions displace African wild dogs from the landscape and suppress their populations, cheetahs persist with lions through space and time. Chapter 2 validates the camera trapping survey designed to study fine-scale carnivore avoidance and highlights the broad utility of citizen science for similar ecological projects. Chapter 3 applies the camera trapping survey to reveal that fine-scale avoidance does not always translate into costly spatial displacement for subordinate species. Together, these chapters identify large-scale displacement as a key driver of mesopredator suppression and fine-scale avoidance as a key mechanism for mesopredator persistence. This dissertation further establishes new methods to continue exploring community dynamics for long-lived, wide-ranging species.