The highland Wari (AD 600–1000) were an influential and expansive Andean civilisation, yet the nature and organisation of Wari power is debated. For example, it is suggested that coastal Nasca was governed by Wari, but doubts remain about its role in the region. Recent excavations at Huaca del Loro in Nasca have uncovered rectilinear compounds, a D-shaped temple, a large cemetery and a domestic area. The authors suggest that this evidence reflects Wari colonisation, undertaken during a period of primary expansion, on a site with long-established ties between Wari and Nasca. The use of multiple colonising strategies and local responses may reflect imperial situations in other world civilisations.

Colony and empire, colonialism and imperialism, are often treated as synonyms. This can be acceptable for many purposes. But there may be also good reasons to distinguish between them. This article considers in detail one important attempt in that direction by the classicist Moses Finley. It argues that there is considerable strength in that approach, putting the stress as it does on the distinctiveness of the settler community. It is also valuable in suggesting that early-modern Western colonialism marked a new departure in an older history of imperialism, thus once again suggesting the need for a conceptual separation of the two. But the article concludes that ultimately more may be lost than gained by insisting on the distinction. In particular, it inhibits wide-ranging comparisons between ancient and modern, and Western and non-Western, empires, which can often suggest illuminating connections and parallels. The field of empire studies gains by drawing on the rich store of examples provided by the whole history of empire, from the earliest times to now. Western colonialism is part of that story; to separate it out is to impoverish the field.

German coffee planters in nineteenth-century Alta Verapaz, Guatemala were also ethnographers, archaeologists, and geographers who published their works in Germany, the United States, and Guatemala. Their published works, as well as coffee plantation records, government correspondence, judicial records and other archival materials reveal how German coffee planters-cum-ethnographers drew upon ethnographic knowledge and representations to forge a reliable labor force. Like ethnographers in Britain's colonies, German settlers in Alta Verapaz understood the potential symmetry between ethnography and the governance of indigenous peoples. Their ethnographic knowledges also push us to reconsider distinctions drawn between German cosmopolitan ethnographic traditions and British functionalist ones and demonstrate how ethnographic knowledge and cultural difference could be deployed to forge new kinds of racial capitalism. In Guatemala, the intimate relationship between the rise of capitalism and ethnography shaped the anti-communism of mid-twentieth-century anthropology in the region.

In both field samples and cultures the total amount of sugar and of carbon in colonies of Phaeocystis globosa was correlated with colony surface area, suggesting a hollow structure. A conceptual model based on biochemical data and on the assumption that the mucus occurs as a layer of a fixed thickness, irrespective of colony size, predicts that the thickness of the layer is 7 μm. A confocal laser scanning microscope image of fluorescently labelled mucus confirmed this view of the colony structure. The measured contents of carbon and sugar per cell (including mucus) were constant for all colony sizes. Cells in laboratory cultures contained 122 pg C, which is twice the value for cells obtained at a field station in the North Sea (57 pg). In contrast, sugar per cell was higher in the field than in exponentially growing cultures. Therefore the percentage of sugar carbon relative to total carbon of colonies in the field was higher (19–35%) than that in cultures (10%). Highest values were found at low ambient nutrient concentrations, probably due to the presence of storage glucans in the cells that are produced under nutrient limitation. The functional role of Phaeocystis colonies in the pelagic system has to be re-evaluated because (i) biomass estimates have previously often been based on the assumption of a colony filled with mucus while in reality it is a hollow structure with an aqueous lumen, and (ii) in contrast to earlier reports it is shown that only a small amount of carbohydrate is needed to build the colony structure.

Establishment and maintenance of a laboratory colony of Phlebotomus argentines are described which presently is in the nineteenth generation. Larvae were reared in modified plastic vials and were fed with a newly prepared food. Emerged flies were kept in adult holding cages at 50–90% r.h. and 25–26°C and provided with 30% sucrose solution. The average development time (egg to adult) of each generation in the laboratory was about 32 days at 28–31°C. Adult females were fed blood on hamsters, humans and white mice. Observations were made on mating behaviour, host preference, oviposition, effect of temperature, etc.