California Islands Research Articles

With and Beyond Los Angeles’s Daddy Tank: Gender, Confinement, and Queer Desire

ABSTRACT This article outlines a carceral history of Los Angeles through the policing of gender, and in particular, the policing of queer brown masculinity. It traces the twinned regimes of gender and prison in Los Angeles to Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo’s 16th century colonial fiction about the capture of a gender nonconforming warrior queen Calafia, who ruled the mythical island of California. The violent logics of Calafia’s capture persist in the city’s carceral expansion and continue to impact gender nonconforming people today. Through an engagement with community histories that document spaces for gender confinement, such as the Daddy Tank, a cellblock used for masculine expressed people and lesbians at the Sybil Brand Institute in the 1970s, this paper centres moments of queer excess that counter such spaces. I follow Nancy Valverde, a Chicana butch elder, whose stories of detention for ‘masquerading’ in Los Angeles in the 1950s have much to teach us about gender nonconformity – from its policing to the liberatory possibilities of queer resistance.

Isla San Pedro Nolasco as a Late Miocene intrusive record at the eastern margin of the Gulf of California: Insights from geological, geochemical and geochronological studies

Isla San Pedro Nolasco (ISPN) is a structural high bounded by inactive dextral oblique-slip faults in the east-central part of the Gulf of California rift zone and is composed of intrusive rocks not exposed on other Gulf of California islands. Here we present the reconnaissance results from geological mapping, as well as first geochemical and geochronological data for the ISPN intrusive complex. The intrusive rocks compose a sheet-like body of intermediate and felsic composition intruded by an intermediate and acidic dike swarm. All intrusive rocks (host and dikes) range in age from ca. 9 Ma to 10 Ma (40Ar/39Ar) and show a hydrous ferromagnesian mineral association (amphibole and biotite) with a calc-alkalic and transitional affinity. This hydrated mineralogical association has not been recognized in the coeval rocks along the onshore western margin of the North American plate (coastal Sonora). However, such hydrous mineralogical association is found in the coeval rift transitional volcanic rocks from the Baja California Microplate at Santa Rosalía and Bahía de Los Ángeles – Bahía de Las Ánimas. The ISPN continental block, at least 40 km long, has been pulled apart by transtensional faulting of the late Miocene Gulf of California shear zone before the westward migration of the North America-Pacific plate boundary at ca. 3–2 Ma. Eventually, ISPN became isolated as an island during the late Miocene flooding of the Gulf of California seaway.

Three new species of the sea fan genus Leptogorgia (Octocorallia, Gorgoniidae) from the Gulf of California, Mexico.

Three new sea fan species of Leptogorgia were discovered during multiple scuba diving expeditions along the Gulf of California coast and islands. Leptogorgia iridissp. nov. is distributed in the southern region of the gulf (Mexican Province), inhabiting tropical rocky reefs of the Islas Marías Archipelago (Nayarit) and Bahía Banderas (Jalisco). This species has small colonies (< 7 cm height) with at least five clearly distinct chromotypes. Leptogorgia martirensissp. nov. was found exclusively on the rocky reefs of San Pedro Mártir and San Esteban Islands located in the northern region of the Gulf of California (northern region of Cortez Province). Leptogorgia enricisp. nov. is distributed from the south to the northern region of the Gulf of California (Cortez Province), inhabiting substrates of rocky reefs, sandy and pebbly sea floors. Comprehensive ecological diving expeditions to identify and classify octocorals in the Mexican Pacific (1995–2019) indicate that L. iridissp. nov. and L. martirensissp. nov. are likely to be micro-endemics and L. enricisp. nov. is endemic to the Gulf of California, which defines their currently known biogeographic distribution ranges.

Human ecology, paleogeography, and biodiversity on California’s small Islands

The island laboratory concept has long been an important construct in island archaeology, with an emphasis on human biogeography and issues of isolation, connectivity, interaction, evolution, and extinction. The Pacific Coast of Alta and Baja California contains several offshore islands that offer a framework for evaluating a variety of cultural and ecological issues. The California Islands include large islands (>100 km2) with abundant resources that were attractive to ancient people for 13,000 years and numerous small islands (5 km2 in area or less), many of which contain evidence of human occupation for centuries to millennia. Most of these small islands have seen limited archaeological research and often are presumed to have been marginal locations for past human settlement. Today, small islands from San Francisco Bay to Baja California provide key habitat for endemic species, breeding seabirds and marine mammals, and rare plants. Here, we review the archaeology of small islands on California’s outer coast, focusing on paleogeography, human settlement dynamics, and ecology and biodiversity. Synthesis of archaeological and environmental data demonstrate the utility of small islands as model systems for evaluating changes in island ecology.

Putting The Pieces Together Again: American States and the End of the ACA's Shared Responsibility Payment.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) eliminated the ACA's "shared responsibility payment," which penalized those who failed to comply with the requirement to purchase health insurance. In this article the authors explain efforts in several states to respond to this change by adopting individual health insurance mandates at the state level. Although there are good reasons to think that states may be reluctant to consider establishing their own mandates, New Jersey, the District of Columbia, and Vermont quickly joined Massachusetts in establishing such measures in 2018. In 2019 California and Rhode Island enacted state-level mandates. Four other states-Maryland, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Washington-formally considered mandates but have not enacted them. The authors compare the policy debates among these states and one other state, New York, which has not seen a legislative proposal for a mandate despite its strong support for the ACA. Their analysis explores the dynamics within the US federal system when a key component of a complex and politically salient national initiative is eliminated and states are left with many policy, political, and administrative questions of what to do next.

Phylogenetic relationships and origin of the rattlesnakes of the Gulf of California islands (Viperidae: Crotalinae: Crotalus)

The islands of the Gulf of California are divided into three categories – oceanic, continental, and landbridge – and were formed from the Middle Miocene to the Holocene. The species of the Crotalus genus are an important ecological element of the endemic fauna of these islands. This study is the first to include several island-endemic species in a phylogenetic framework. We seek to understand the phylogenetic relationships among these species, and in particular, whether these species are more related to the Baja California peninsula or continental Mexican species, and whether the divergence times for these relationships are consistent with the formation of the islands. We performed a phylogenetic analysis and estimated divergence times using Bayesian inference and two mitochondrial 12S and 16S genes. The analyses show a new relationship between Crotalus angelensis and C. pyrrhus. Crotalus lorenzoensis was nested with C. ruber individuals, making this species a paraphyletic species. A novel relationship was also detected in that C. estebanensis was sister to C. basiliscus. The divergence time for all island-endemic Crotalus species is consistent with the formation of these islands. In addition, the insular species are related to their congeners in the Baja California peninsula or mainland Mexico.

A Quiet Coup: Balkanizing the U.S. by Eliminating the Electoral College

There are calls for US presidential elections to be changed. The existing Electoral College system, a method that has been in effect in every presidential election since the 1804 approval of the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution, is seen by those seeking change as an unjust way for selecting US presidents. Many Democrats remain enraged by the fact that Hillary Clinton received more votes than Donald Trump in 2016 but was not elected president due to the Electoral College’s state-by-state electoral system. A movement is taking place in some state legislatures to adopt a system called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact [the Compact]. This is a key part of a strategy drafted in 2006 and not yet operative but gaining state signatories. At this point in May 2019 all the current 15 state signatories to the Compact represent states with Democratic-controlled legislatures. The District of Columbia has also voted to join the Compact, bringing the total count to 16. The Investors Business Daily published an analysis of the worst run and best run states from a fiscal perspective. The worst run states included Illinois, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Mexico, New York, and Rhode Island. Each of these states is a signatory to the national popular vote Compact. The best run states included South Dakota, Tennessee, Nebraska, Florida, Utah, Alaska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, New Hampshire, and Montana. With the exception of New Hampshire they are all “Red” states. None is a signatory to the Compact. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an attempt at a “quiet coup” seeking permanent voting control of the office of the US Presidency. As such it offers a perfect recipe for the balkanization of America, contradicting the wisdom of those such as James Madison, one of our Founding Fathers who played a critical role in the formation of our Constitution. Madison recognized the inevitable factionalism of competing interests and diverse cultures in America. The Compact seeks to effectively amend the US Constitution de facto while pretending otherwise. The advocates launched a strategy through the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact knowing they could not gain the required approval of three-fourths of US states to create a national vote simple majority or plurality amendment to the US Constitution in place of the Twelfth Amendment’s Electoral College system.

Bats of the California Channel Islands: New Records with New Methods

Eight bat species were known and documented from the California Channel Islands when J.C. Von Bloeker (1967) presented at the First California Islands Symposium in 1965. Additional bat surveys by P.E. Brown (1980) in the 1970s resulted in “Distribution of bats of the California Channel Islands,” which was presented at the second symposium in 1978. Methods of detecting and identifying bats have changed over the past century. Museum collection methods using shotguns have been replaced by mist-netting and recording of echolocation calls. Currently, capture or acoustic records have identified 14 bat species (56% of the 25 species known to occur in California) on 6 of the 8 California Channel Islands, with occasional sightings of flying bats on Anacapa and San Miguel Islands. Bats now compose 78% of the native mammals on the islands (Collins 2012). Acoustic recording equipment has become smaller and easier to use in the field, and recorded echolocation signals are now recognized as valid “vouchers” if the species emits calls that are separable from others. For example, echolocation signals have identified western red bat (Lasiurus blossevillii), hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), western yellow bat (Lasiurus xanthinus), and Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) from San Nicolas Island, and western mastiff bat (Eumops perotis) and canyon bat (Parastrellus hesperus) from Santa Cruz Island. Acoustic data have identified 3 new species for the California Channel Islands, as well as several new records on individual islands. As acoustic monitoring and other techniques are used more extensively, the number of species documented will increase and the proportions that are resident, vagrant, or transient on each island can be better resolved.

California Island Rediscovery: Building an Archive to Improve Conservation Today and Equip the Historical Ecologist of Tomorrow

An understanding of how past conditions have shaped present-day ecological patterns and trends is critical to science-based conservation management. Unfortunately, the records, specimens, and objects historical ecologists need to help generate that understanding are often lacking. And because of a general underinvestment by society in systematic collection and museum curation, future historical ecologists may be similarly limited in their ability to investigate conditions regarding our present day. Given the importance of historical data and materials in contemporary conservation decision-making, we suggest it is incumbent upon resource managers and scientists to ask whether additional research efforts are needed to document past and present conditions of the places and resources of their interest. Here, we discuss how such an inquiry was applied to the terrestrial and nearshore environments of Santa Cruz Island, California, USA. The island harbors numerous endemic taxa, important archaeological and fossil sites, and rich cultural significance. It also has undergone dramatic and ongoing alteration due to past and present human activities. We describe an interdisciplinary effort to identify information gaps regarding past and present conditions of the island. In many cases, filling those gaps will require a research focus on a broader geography and suite of resources, including the archipelago in which the island sits and mainland “sister sites.” An initiative to improve collection and retention of priority information could be a basis of interdisciplinary and multi-institutional collaboration and could be designed to foster environmental education and citizen science programs that engage the next generation of conservationists. An outcome of this initiative would be an archive of materials and data to inform the historical ecologists and conservationists of the future, and to help conservationists today ensure that the resources they deem most important will be stewarded successfully into that future.

T.D.A. Cockerell (1866–1948) of the University of Colorado: His Contributions to the Natural History of the California Islands and the Establishment of Channel Islands National Monument

Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell was a naturalist at the University of Colorado from 1904 to 1947 and studied botany, zoology, and paleontology in North and South America, Asia, Australia, Africa, and Europe. In the latter part of his career, he studied the California islands and published many papers on their natural history, 16 of them in four years (1937–1940). He made important contributions to the natural history of the islands in four distinct ways: entomology of the islands, including identification of a number of new species of bees; discovery of fossil marine invertebrate faunas and recognition that the zoogeography of the taxa reflects the position of the islands relative to converging cool and warm currents; discovery of abundant land snails, both living and in fossil form, and recognition that the fossils are in close stratigraphic association with mammoth fossils; and island biogeography, with considerations of species dispersal mechanisms and endemism. Newly discovered letters and memos also reveal that Cockerell played a pivotal role in the establishment of Channel Islands National Monument.

The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Anacapa Island, California

The 3 islets of Anacapa Island, with a combined area of 1.1 mi2 (2.9 km2), lie 13 mi (20 km) off the coast of southern California. Historically, each of Anacapa’s islets has been subjected to periodic grazing by sheep, and the eastern islet has also had a sizeable population of introduced rabbits. In spite of these past perturbations, the recovery of the island’s vegetation has been remarkable since sheep removal in 1937. Despite its small size, Anacapa Island supports a surprising diversity of vascular plants, with nearly 200 native taxa from 50 plant families. Twenty-one of these native taxa are restricted to the California Islands; one annual species of Malacothrix occurs as a narrow endemic found only on Middle Anacapa Island, while another annual subspecies of Malacothrix is known only from West and East Anacapa. The floral diversity of this island has apparently been influenced by its close proximity to the mainland and other larger islands and by its diverse topography. Anacapa Island supports a slightly larger native flora than San Miguel Island, which is about 13 times larger and is located about 50 mi (80 km) to the west. The Anacapa native flora is more than twice the size of that found on Santa Barbara Island, which has almost the same area as Anacapa Island but is located approximately 62 mi (100 km) to the southeast. Even though botanical exploration on Anacapa began in 1889, the current work represents the first complete enumeration of the island’s flora.

Dred Scott on the Pacific

In 1857, hundreds of black Californians migrated to western Canada, where they sought to become naturalized British subjects. In less than a decade many of them returned to California. They were propelled, in the first instance, by the Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) ruling that U.S.-born African Americans were not citizens, and in the second instance by the Fourteenth (1868) and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments that reversed Dred Scott and promised voting rights. The article explores the reasons for Vancouver Island’s racial liberalism and its initial acceptance and later political reversal of African American settlers’ rights. In the long run, this pair of transnational migrations illuminate the significant roles of African Americans in shaping the course of westward expansion of both California and Vancouver Island.

Horizon Scanning: Survey and Research Priorities for Cultural, Historical, and Paleobiological Resources of Santa Cruz Island, California

Santa Cruz Island contains a remarkable array of cultural and biological resources and a rich tradition of research across the social and biological sciences and humanities. Given dramatic changes in climate forecast in the coming decades of the Anthropocene, however, many questions remain about the sustainability and future of island ecosystems and cultural resources. Here, we focus on a new interdisciplinary initiative, Island Rediscovery (IR), that was the subject of 2 recent workshops. Drawing on a variety of disciplines and approaches, IR seeks to utilize research on Santa Cruz Island's past and present to help better prepare for the future and plan for forecast change, an approach we call horizon scanning. Our focus is on archaeology, history, and paleobiology, 3 disciplines that offer deep historical perspectives critical to understanding modern ecosystems and preparing for future variability. We outline the potential of deep historical research, offer core questions that can guide future work, and document the need for a large synthetic database and digitization effort. By integrating the historical and biological sciences, the historical ecological approach of IR offers a new framework for managing the resources of the California Islands by providing baselines and context for management, documenting the range of ecological variability through deep time, and helping establish desired future conditions.

Anachronous Antipodes: The Island of California, The Medieval Mediterranean, and the Modern Pacific

AS A SPATIAL counterpart to historical periodization, geographic territorialization constructs discrete, sovereign geographical areas that, like discrete historical eras, can be leveraged within the modern world system to support the uneven distribution of labour and capital so central to that system. The priority that European explorers (and later Euro-American settlers) put on naming the landscapes of the New World exemplifies this modern preoccupation with territorialization. The survival of place-names, particularly "California," speaks to the extent to which European modernity has rendered the globe in its own terms, concealing this colonial cartography by making such place-names seem normal, intimate—as if European namings of New World landscapes were innocent, mere flights of fancy. This, it turns out, is modernity's modus operandi: it claims history as its own, making the "un-Modern" both the property of modernity and modernity's antithesis.

Dietary reconstruction of pygmy mammoths from Santa Rosa Island of California

Microwear analyses have proven to be reliable for elucidating dietary differences in taxa with similar gross tooth morphologies. We analyzed enamel microwear of a large sample of Channel Island pygmy mammoth (Mammuthus exilis) molars from Santa Rosa Island, California and compared our results to those of extant proboscideans, extant ungulates, and mainland fossil mammoths and mastodons from North America and Europe. Our results show a distinct narrowing in mammoth dietary niche space after mainland mammoths colonized Santa Rosa as M. exilis became more specialized on browsing on leaves and twigs than the Columbian mammoth and modern elephant pattern of switching more between browse and grass. Scratch numbers and scratch width scores support this interpretation as does the Pleistocene vegetation history of Santa Rosa Island whereby extensive conifer forests were available during the last glacial when M. exilis flourished. The ecological disturbances and alteration of this vegetation (i.e., diminishing conifer forests) as the climate warmed suggests that climatic factors may have been a contributing factor to the extinction of M. exilis on Santa Rosa Island in the Late Pleistocene.

A Preliminary Study ofArgiope argentataas Indicators of Southern California Metal Contamination

Summary This study describes a novel test for 16 metals using Argiope argentata as indicators of environmental pollution. Our results suggest that A. argentata from a relatively isolated California island suffer a more diverse metal burden than those from the California mainland. Metal burdens of Cd, Cs, Ni, Sr, Tl, and U were greater in Santa Catalina specimens. Only the metal burdens of As and V were greater in the mainland Encinitas specimens. The metal burdens of Be, Bi, Co, Cr, Ga, In, Li, and Pb were not different between the sites. Soil samples taken later from the same sampling locations confirm higher concentrations of Cd, Ni and Sr on Santa Catalina, while cactus plants from the sites had a different pattern of metal accumulation. The effect of metal burden on spider body weight was examined, and Santa Catalina A. argentata had significantly increased mass compared to Encinitas spiders. This indicates that, despite a more diverse burden of metals, A. argentata spiders from Santa Catalina may hav...

Invasion of the Fungal Pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis on California Islands.

Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), an amphibian fungal pathogen, has infected >500 species and caused extinctions or declines in >200 species worldwide. Despite over a decade of research, little is known about its invasion biology. To better understand this, we conducted a museum specimen survey (1910-1997) of Bd in amphibians on 11 California islands and found a pattern consistent with the emergence of Bd epizootics on the mainland, suggesting that geographic isolation did not prevent Bd invasion. We propose that suitable habitat, host diversity, and human visitation overcome isolation from the mainland and play a role in Bd invasion.

Molecular identity, morphology and taxonomy of the Rhynchospio glutaea complex with a key to Rhynchospio species (Annelida, Spionidae)

Rhynchospio glutaea (Ehlers, 1897), Rhynchospio arenincola Hartman, 1936 and Rhynchospio arenincola asiatica Chlebovitsch, 1959, originally described from Strait of Magellan, California, and South Kurile Islands respectively, appear similar to each other in adult morphology. These species and subspecies have been considered by some authors as subjective synonyms and are here referred to as members of the R. glutaea complex. Sequence data of four gene fragments (2465 bp in total) of the mitochondrial 16S rDNA, nuclear 18S and 28S rDNA, and Histone 3 have shown that R. glutaea complex individuals from the South West Atlantic (Argentina), North East Pacific (British Columbia and Oregon) and North West Pacific (South Korea) were genetically distant and not conspecific. These data also indicate that R. arenincola from North America and R. aff. asiatica from South Korea are more closely related to each other, and both are closer to R. glutaea from South America than to R. nhatrangi from Vietnam: nhatrangi (glutaea (arenincola-aff. asiatica)). Adults of the R. glutaea complex are hermaphrodites and the arrangement of gametes is suggested to be a crucial reproductive character for distinguishing these species. Based on this character, two species of the complex are apparent in the North West Pacific: R. asiatica Chlebovitsch, 1959 stat. nov. from the Kurile Islands (not analysed here) and an unnamed species from the mainland coast of Asia (here referred to as R. aff. asiatica). Adult morphology of R. asiatica stat. nov. is briefly described and illustrated. The lectotype and the type locality of the species on Iturup Is. are established for the first time. An identification key is provided to the 10 currently recognized Rhynchospio species.

The Implications of Increased Body Size in the Song Sparrows of the California Islands

We investigated morphological divergence between mainland and California Island populations of the Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia). Body size in small terrestrial vertebrates has been hypothesized to be larger in island forms than in their mainland relatives. Previously, we established that although bill size in island populations was similar to that in mainland populations with similar climate, bill-size dimorphism averaged much greater on the islands. In this paper, we compare various measures of structural body size and body mass between the California Islands and the mainland. We found that average body mass is over 10% higher in island Song Sparrows than in comparable mainland populations. However, a lack of commensurate structural body size suggests that body condition might be better in island Song Sparrows. This higher size-corrected mass may be explained by the dominance hypothesis, greater food availability and/or reduced competition, or adaptive mass regulation in the face of reduced predation pressure on adults. Both greater sexual bill dimorphism and greater body mass suggest reduced competition for food for the island Song Sparrow: a possibility that invites further investigation.

Island Specialists: Shared Flora of the Alta and Baja California Pacific Islands

The floristic connection between the mediterranean region of Baja California and the Pacific islands of Alta and Baja California provides insight into the history and origin of the California Floristic Province. We present updated species lists for all California Floristic Province islands and demonstrate the disjunct distributions of 26 taxa between the Baja California and the California Channel Islands. These 26 plant taxa are found among the 16 Pacific islands without occurring on the intervening mainland of Alta California. Separate species lists for each island group (8 California Channel Islands and 8 Baja California Islands) were compiled. These lists were compared to the mainland California flora to identify species that occur on the California Islands and either the Baja California Pacific Islands or the mediterranean region of the Baja California Peninsula, but not the mainland of Alta California. This first compilation of the flora of the Baja California Islands and nomenclatural updates for the Channel Islands provide a platform for future research and conservation planning.