Article impact statement: Cultural consensus theory helps in evaluation of conservation education initiatives. AbstractThis article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 2Conservation professionals recognize the need to evaluate education initiatives with a flexible approach that is culturally appropriate. Cultural-consensus theory (CCT) provides a framework for measuring the extent to which beliefs are communally held and has long been applied by social scientists. In a conservation-education context, we applied CCT and used free lists (i.e., a list of items on a topic stated in order of cultural importance) and domain analysis (analysis of how free lists go together within a cultural group) to evaluate a conservation education program in which we used a children's picture book to increase knowledge about and empathy for a critically endangered mammal, the Javan slow loris (Nycticebus javanicus). We extracted free lists of keywords generated by students (n=580 in 18 schools) from essays they wrote before and after the education program. In 2 classroom sessions conducted approximately 18 weeks apart, we asked students to write an essay about their knowledge of the target species and then presented a book and several activities about slow loris ecology. Prior to the second session, we asked students to write a second essay. We generated free lists from both essays, quantified salience of terms used, and conducted minimal residuals factor analysis to determine presence of cultural domains surrounding slow lorises in each session. Students increased their use of words accurately associated with slow loris ecology and conservation from 43% in initial essays to 76% in final essays . Domain coherence increased from 22% to 47% across schools. Fifteen factors contributed to the domain slow loris. Between the first and second essays, factors that showed the greatest change were feeding ecology and slow loris as a forest protector, which increased 7-fold, and the humancentric factor, which decreased 5-fold. As demonstrated by knowledge retention and creation of unique stories and conservation opinions, children achieved all six levels of Bloom's taxonomy of learning domains. Free from the constraints of questionnaires and This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 3 surveys, CCT methods provide a promising avenue to evaluate conservation education programs.

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Speciation is the process through which new species arise through the splitting of lineages within parent species. There is much debate regarding both the rate and mode of speciation among living populations. Phyletic gradualism and punctuated equilibrium represent two ends of a spectrum regarding the rate at which speciation occurs—painting two very different pictures of these events. Meanwhile, the mode of speciation is often classified in terms of spatial context by researchers to produce a continuum of mechanisms ranging from complete geographic isolation between populations in allopatric speciation to no geographic separation in sympatric speciation. However, many scientists agree that speciation is far too prolonged and complex a process to be easily classified into concrete categories. It is considered more prudent to view this process as a collection of stages, each with its own set of evolutionary forces driving the course of speciation itself.

Knuckle walking is a mode of quadrupedalism employed by the African apes within the genera Gorilla and Pan wherein a large portion of the body weight is supported by the arms, with the dorsal middle phalanges making contact with the ground on each weight‐bearing stride. Several morphological features may be associated with knuckle walking, such as limited dorsiflexion in the wrist joint, dorsal concavities and ridges along the hamate and capitate bones, and the presence of knuckle pads on the dorsal surface of the phalanges. Though the trait is unique to the African apes among primates, there is a high level of variation between Gorilla and Pan in regard to technique and frequency of knuckle walking. Whether these differences are the consequence of varying degrees of arboreality and body size or evidence of parallel evolution of knuckle walking within the genera has yet to be resolved. Further research into traits indicative of knuckle walking in the fossil record of ancestral apes will enable future scientists to determine whether or not knuckle walking is the ancestral locomotive state for all African apes, including humans.