Both gender and ethnicity have received increasing scholarly attention in British elections. But surprisingly little is published on whether there is a gender gap among ethnic minority voters, although intersectional perspectives suggest that this matters a great deal. We analyse data from Understanding Society to test whether there is such a gender gap among the five main ethnic minority groups with high levels of electoral eligibility and participation. We show that there is a positive gender gap with women in Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups more likely to support Labour than the Conservatives, but that there is not a gender gap among other ethnic minority groups. We further show that these gender gaps do not change in magnitude when socio-economic characteristics or political attitudes are taken into account. Our results suggest that further work is needed to explain gender gaps in vote choice among ethnic minority voters in Britain.

The 2016 referendum on UK membership in the European Union (EU) led to a realignment of voters along their referendum position (Fieldhouse et al. 2021; Sobolewska and Ford 2020). By December 2019, both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party received approximately 80% of their support from voters who had been on “their” side during the referendum (Fieldhouse et al. 2021). Brexit identities were akin to partisanship, with affective polarization and perceptual screening (Sobolewska and Ford 2020; Sorace and Hobolt 2021). Research also traces the Brexit vote to a growing values divide (Evans and Menon 2017), with ethnocentric attitudes found on opposing sides of the referendum (Sobolewska and Ford 2020). The views of ethnic minority voters, as traditional victims of white ethnocentrism, have been seen largely in this debate as the same as the identity of liberal Remainers. However, despite the assumption that minorities naturally would fall on the side opposing white ethnocentrism, the referendum marked the biggest departure from the traditional ethnic minorities bloc vote since 2005, when a substantial minority of Muslim voters deserted Labour over the Iraq War (Curtice, Fisher, and Steed 2005). The Leave side in the 2016 referendum received approximately one third of the votes of ethnic minorities (Martin, Sobolewska, and Begum 2020), despite Leave also drawing a majority of its support from “UKIP-curious” voters (Evans and Mellon 2019) who had voted for or considered supporting the anti-immigrant radical-right United Kingdom Independence Party.

Evolutionary demographers often invoke tradeoffs between reproduction and survival to explain reductions in fertility during demographic transitions. The evidence for such tradeoffs in humans has been mixed, partly because tradeoffs may be masked by individual differences in quality or access to resources. Unmasking tradeoffs despite such phenotypic correlations requires sophisticated statistical analyses that account for endogeneity among variables and individual differences in access to resources. Here we tested for costs of reproduction using N = 13,663 birth records from the maternity hospital in Basel, Switzerland, 1896–1939, a period characterised by rapid fertility declines. We predicted that higher parity is associated with worse maternal and offspring condition at the time of birth, adjusting for age and a variety of covariates. We used Bayesian multivariate, multilevel models to simultaneously analyse multiple related outcomes while accounting for endogeneity, appropriately modelling non-linear effects, dealing with hierarchical data structures, and effectively imputing missing data. Despite all these efforts, we found virtually no evidence for costs of reproduction. Instead, women with better access to resources had fewer children. Barring limitations of the data, these results are consistent with demographic transitions reflecting women's investment in their own embodied capital and/or the adoption of maladaptive low-fertility norms by elites.

Assessing the impacts of invasive predators on the demography and distribution of native species is critical for understanding mechanisms of species persistence and informing the design of recovery programmes. On the oceanic island of Guam, the introduction of the predatory brown treesnake Boiga irregularis after World War II caused the near-total loss of the native forest avifauna. Localised snake control measures have been implemented since the early 1990s, yet it remains poorly understood how they have impacted Guam’s remaining native bird populations. To address this question, we combined intensive area searches of Andersen Air Force Base (AAFB) with island-wide transect surveys and opportunistic sightings to provide a comprehensive update on the distribution and abundance of Såli (Micronesian Starling, Aplonis opaca) – one of Guam’s last extant native bird species. Area searches of AAFB, where the largest remnant of the Såli population persists, revealed a 15-fold population increase since the last survey in the early 1990s, and transect surveys and opportunistic sightings indicate incipient recolonisation of other urbanised areas of northern and central Guam. We estimate the current island-wide population size at ~1,400 individuals. The population increase can likely be attributed to a combination of snake control measures and the Såli’s ability to exploit urban refugia for nesting and roosting. Although these trends demonstrate some population recovery, a skewed age ratio (>90% adults and subadults) at AAFB and a highly urbanised distribution and low abundance outside AAFB indicate that snake predation continues to strongly impact the population. More intensive snake suppression efforts, particularly in forested areas, may allow for the Såli population to attain its former distribution and abundance on Guam. More broadly, our findings reinforce the importance of urban areas as refugia for some threatened species.

Seed dispersal is an important ecological process that structures plant communities and influences ecosystem functioning. Loss of animal dispersers therefore poses a serious threat to forest ecosystems, particularly in the tropics where zoochory predominates. A prominent example is the near-total extinction of seed dispersers on the tropical island of Guam following the accidental introduction of the invasive brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis), negatively impacting seedling recruitment and forest regeneration. We investigated frugivory by a remnant population of Såli (Micronesian starling – Aplonis opaca) on Guam and two other island populations (Rota, Saipan) to evaluate their ecological role as a seed disperser in the Mariana archipelago. Using a combination of behavioural observations, nest contents and fecal samples, we documented frugivory of 37 plant species. Native plants comprised the majority (66%) of all species and 90% of all seeds identified in fecal and nest contents. Diet was highly similar across age classes and sampling years. In addition, plant species consumed by Såli comprised 88% of bird-dispersed adult trees and 54% of all adult trees in long-term forest monitoring plots, demonstrating the Såli’s broad diet and potential for restoring native forests. Overall, we provide the most comprehensive assessment to date of frugivory by the Såli and confirm its importance as a seed disperser on Guam and throughout the Marianas.