Veil

Abstract

The concept of “the veil” has been used as a metaphor by many fiction and nonfiction writers to represent and describe individual and societal actions, values, and activities. More specifically, the term has been used to describe the covers, barriers, and shields limiting—and in some cases oppressing—the ability to see the individual self, or the society, in a clearer and more objective manner. From this perspective, the veil has been used to describe how social reality can be narrowed, skewed, and distorted. W. E. B. Du Bois was the first scholar to use the metaphor of the veil, as he had used other metaphors such as double consciousness, the color line, and masking, to describe the oppressive race and class inequities suffered by racial and ethnic groups in the United States and abroad.

How Do Landscape Structure, Management and Habitat Quality Drive the Colonization of Habitat Patches by the Dryad Butterfly (Lepidoptera: Satyrinae) in Fragmented Grassland?

“…In extreme cases, high cover of goldenrod in small patches may seriously reduce the availability of larval host grasses of the dryad and threaten its persistence, due to an insufficiency of vital resources and a consequent high risk of a stochastic extinction cf. [ 12 ], [ 16 ]. We noted two such meadows fairly close to the Skołczanka Reserve; they were in fact the only vacant patches in the vicinity of this refugium (authors’ unpubl.…”

“…In Europe, fragmentation is mainly the result of degradation of natural sites, invasions of alien species, and changes in agricultural practices leading either to landscape homogenization by large-scale agriculture or to natural succession due to abandonment of previously managed land, especially grassland [ 1 ], [ 6 ], [ 7 ]. Assessing habitat suitability and making good habitats more accessible for target species of conservation interest are major tasks for conservation biology [ 8 – 12 ].…”

“…On the other hand, landscape ecology and more sophisticated metapopulation concepts consider the spatial variation of habitat quality and landscape heterogeneity, including compositional and spatial structure heterogeneity [ 15 ], [ 19 – 22 ]. From the perspective of particular species, the landscape may consist of a patchwork of various habitat types which offer different resources for foraging and reproduction [ 12 ], [ 23 ], [ 24 ], and which differ in their suitability for species dispersal [ 13 ], [ 20 ].…”

“…The persistence of populations of a species is affected by dispersal, because many habitat patches do not contain all the essential resources or are too small to support viable populations [ 12 ], [ 16 ], [ 25 ]. The dispersal ability of a particular species depends on its mobility, but also on habitat quality, landscape structure and landscape connectivity [ 26 – 29 ].…”

“…For insects such as butterflies, the main element of habitat quality is the availability of forage and other required resources [ 36 ]. The feeding resource depends on the abundance and distribution of host plants for larvae and nectar plants for imagos [ 12 ], [ 37 ]. Other key factors include vegetation architecture and habitat components such as shrubs [ 24 ], [ 36 ].…”