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289 Until 1989 it was official Communist policy in eastern Europe to absorb Gypsies into the \"ruling\" working class. But many Gypsies fought to maintain their separate identity. This book is about the refusal of one group of Gypsies- the Rom-to abandon their way of life and accept assimilation into the majority population. It is a story about the sources of cultural diversity in modern industrial society and about the fear and hatred that such social and cultural difference may give rise to. The core of the book, based on eighteen months of observation of daily life in a Gypsy settlement, describes the cultivation, celebration, and reinvention of cultural difference and diversity by a people deemed by their social superiors to be too stupid and uncivilized to have a \"culture\" at all.

Gypsies have been the target of prejudiced approaches in real life and literary works for centuries. The most important of these is their being irreligious and believing in nothing. In the spread of negative opinions about Gypsies in Turkish and Western literature, the share of legends and stories derived from them is at the top. Another reason for the spreading of the bad reputation of Gypsies is that their lifestyle is not seen as suitable for the general structure of the society. There is a widespread perception that they are wild, or rather a threat to civilization, because they do not fit into the city system. Whether they are nomadic or not, Gypsies living in closed groups have been marginalized by the general public and this situation is reflected in the works in the same direction. Although they are depicted with prejudices on issues such as morality, belief, cleanliness and theft in Turkish and Western literature, there are a considerable number of works that look at Gypsies from within. When all these works are examined, it is understood that Gypsies have a belief system with strict rules and a deep-rooted tradition, contrary to the common opinion. Marhime beliefs about cleanliness, male and female relationships and taboos about sexuality point to the exact opposite of negative views about them. The belief systems of Gypsies become more comprehensible when their view of life, their perception of time, their attitudes towards death, the importance they give to the family and their use of language are collectively evaluated in the works dealing with Gypsies.

Slovakia belongs to those states with a high number of Romani in terms of population – of the population of about 5.3 million, 480 to 520 thousand people have Romani origin. In Slovakia, only since 1999 have the Gypsies been able to call themselves Roma. In the 1991, 2001, and 2011 censuses, the Romani could decide on their affiliation, they could be considered Roma citizens, but only a few people made use of this right. Only 25% of the Roma ethnic group called themselves Roma, while the majority referred to themselves as Slovakian or Hungarian; so, these demographic data do not reflect reality. The so-called ‘Atlas’-es show a more significantly accurate picture. The creators of these worked together with the local social workers who knew the local Roma communities well in the given settlements. Approximately half of the Romani living in Slovakia were able to change socially to some extent and adapt to the society’s majority. The rest of the Roma minority live isolated in some parts of the city, on the edge of the city, or in the nearby. These communities are characterized by social and ethnic isolation, which may be different in some specific cases. According to different indicators, they are divided into segregated, separated, integrated focused, and integrated scattered groups. Since the year 2003, the state has introduced various social reforms. Local governments have also joined the state-initiated reforms. They create various special projects for their own Roma communities in order to help their advancement.

The history of Gypsies in Russia is a tabula rasa against the background of myriad studies in the development of diasporas (Jews, Germans, Poles, Finns, Chinese, and Koreans). There are few publications, and based on a limited range of subjective sources. Reasons can include both the absence of written sources, authored by Gypsies, and specialists’ ignorance of an array of historical sources that have been preserved in the archives. In our paper, we will review the history that surrounds the formulation of basic legislative acts concerning Gypsies in the Russian Empire until the mid-1850s. By using specific examples, we will demonstrate the practice of enforcing tsarist edicts and the way Gypsies adapted to them. We employed both published laws and archival documents from the archives in St Petersburg and Pskov, which are first introduced into academic research. These allow us to conclude that the tsarist policy towards Russian Gypsies had common features with similar campaigns in European nations as well as its own individual features. In terms of its content, the policy was not intended to eliminate Gypsies as a special ethnic group, even in the context of military-police absolutism established by Paul I and Nicholas I. But even a limited goal – to turn nomadic Gypsies into sedentary farmers or townspeople – was not achieved.

Globalization accelerates the mixing of populations, including those of humans, animals and plants. Consequently, some species invade new natural communities and alter them. One illustrative example is the spongy moth, which was accidentally introduced into North America, where it became a major forest pest after its establishment there. In its native Eurasian environment, the spongy moth’s range has recently shown significant northward expansion, presumably as a consequence of global warming. In its North American range, a similar northward advance is yet to be fully documented. Eurasian populations of the spongy moth show significant developmental plasticity, which allows them to establish themselves in the much colder northern regions due to an acceleration of larval development. The mechanism responsible for this acceleration is not well understood, but our earlier studies point to genetic and epigenetic factors as playing a role. This plasticity indicates that new introductions of Eurasian spongy moths from the northernmost populations pose a more significant threat to North America than previously expected. The spongy moth, Lymatria dispar, is a classic example of an invasive pest accidentally introduced from Europe to North America, where it has become one of the most serious forest defoliators, as in its native range. The present study was aimed at (i) identifying the current northern limit of L. dispar’s Eurasian range and exploring its northward expansion in Canada using pheromone trap data, and (ii) comparing northern Eurasian populations with those from central and southern regions with respect to male flight phenology, the sums of effective temperatures (SETs) above the 7 °C threshold necessary for development to the adult stage, and heat availability. We show that the range of L. dispar in Eurasia now reaches the 61st parallel, and comparisons with historical data identify the average speed of spread as 50 km/year. We also document the northern progression of L. dispar in southern Canada, where the actual northern boundary of its range remains to be identified. We show that the median date of male flight does not vary greatly between northern and southern regions of the spongy moth range in Eurasia despite climate differences. Synchronization of flight at different latitudes of the range is associated with an acceleration of larval development in northern Eurasian populations. Similar changes in developmental rate along a latitudinal gradient have not been documented for North American populations. Thus, we argue that this feature of spongy moths from northern Eurasia poses a significant invasive threat to North America in terms of enhanced risks for rapid northward range expansion.

To determine variation of gene within the genetically specific Croatian Roma (Gypsy) population originating from India and to examine it in the worldwide perspective. Seven SNP loci (rs12721655, rs2279343, rs28399499, rs34097093, rs3745274, rs7260329 and rs8192709) were genotyped in 439 subjects using Kompetitive Allele Specific PCR (KASP) method. The Croatian Roma took an outlying position in variation from the worldwide perspective mainly due to their exceptionally high minor allele frequency (MAF) for rs8192709 (12.8%), and lower for rs2279343 (21.1%) compared with south Asian populations. This study provides the first data of several polymorphisms in Roma population and indicates the need for systematic investigation of the most important pharmacogenes' variants in this large, transnationally isolated population worldwide.

The Roma Diaspora—traditionally known as Gypsies—remains among the least explored population migratory events in historical times. It involved the migration of Roma ancestors out-of-India through the plateaus of Western Asia ultimately reaching Europe. The demographic effects of the Diaspora—bottlenecks, endogamy, and gene flow—might have left marked molecular traces in the Roma genomes. Here, we analyze the whole-genome sequence of 46 Roma individuals pertaining to four migrant groups in six European countries. Our analyses revealed a strong, early founder effect followed by a drastic reduction of ∼44% in effective population size. The Roma common ancestors split from the Punjabi population, from Northwest India, some generations before the Diaspora started, <2,000 years ago. The initial bottleneck and subsequent endogamy are revealed by the occurrence of extensive runs of homozygosity and identity-by-descent segments in all Roma populations. Furthermore, we provide evidence of gene flow from Armenian and Anatolian groups in present-day Roma, although the primary contribution to Roma gene pool comes from non-Roma Europeans, which accounts for >50% of their genomes. The linguistic and historical differentiation of Roma in migrant groups is confirmed by the differential proportion, but not a differential source, of European admixture in the Roma groups, which shows a westward cline. In the present study, we found that despite the strong admixture Roma had in their diaspora, the signature of the initial bottleneck and the subsequent endogamy is still present in Roma genomes.

The symbiotic bacteria-insect interaction is considered to be associated with immunity and drug resistance. However, the wide variety of insect species and habitats is thought to have a significant impact on the symbiotic community, leading to disparate results. Here, we demonstrated that symbiotic bacteria regulated the immune response by changing the proportion of the Gram-positive and the Gram-negative bacterial community in Lymantria dispar (L. dispar) after infection with its viral pathogen, L. dispar Nucleopolyhedrovirus (LdMNPV). After oral infection, the immune deficiency pathway was activated immediately, and the expression of Relish was up-regulated to promote the secretion of antimicrobial peptides. Meanwhile, the abundance of the Gram-negative bacterial community increased at the same time. Moreover, the Toll pathway was not regulated in the same way as the Imd pathway was after infection. However, the change in the Toll pathway's expression remained positively correlated to the abundance of Gram-positive bacteria. This finding implied that the ratio of Gram-negative to Gram-positive bacteria in the LdMNPV infected larvae had an effect on the immune response. Our findings revealed that the immune regulation of L. dispar was regulated by the relative abundance of its symbiotic bacteria at different infection times with LdMNPV, which provides a new way to understand symbiotic bacteria-insect interactions.

Botanicals, such as essential oils (EO) and their compounds, are considered a viable eco-friendly alternative to synthetic insecticides, which threaten human health and ecosystem functioning. In the present study, we explored the potential use of two EO compounds, trans-anethole (phenylpropanoid) and S-(+)-carvone (monoterpene ketone), against gypsy moth larvae (GML), a serious pest of deciduous forests and orchards. GML feeding, survival, molting, and nutritional physiology were assessed at different compound concentrations and compared with the effects of the commercial botanical product NeemAzal[sup.®]-T/S (neem). The impact of botanicals on GML feeding was assessed by the leaf-dipping method and showed the highest antifeeding activity of neem in the no-choice assay. GML that were offered a choice were deterred by anethole and attracted by low concentrations of carvone and neem. Ingestion of botanicals was more effective in inducing mortality and reducing molting than residual contact exposure. Anethole and carvone were better toxicants but worse growth regulators than neem. Assessing nutritional indices revealed reduced growth, consumption, and food utilization in larvae fed on botanical-supplemented diets. The highest metabolic cost of food processing was recorded in carvone-fed larvae, which exhibited a negative growth rate. The results suggest that anethole and carvone might be used as control agents against GML.