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This article contributes to scholarly debates about the role of conservation in the reproduction of capitalist social relations with a case study on marine protected areas in the Canadian Arctic. Unlike historic parks in Canada, and modern parks in the Global South, new parks and protected areas in Canada are not cases of ‘primitive accumulation’ or ‘accumulation by dispossession’. Drawing on Gramscian historical materialism, we argue that their relationship to capital accumulation is primarily one of legitimization. Protected areas play a complex and contradictory role in the reproduction of capitalism in northern Canada. Because they protect important wildlife habitat and hunting grounds from extraction, and insofar as they usually entail support for fishing and hunting practices, the establishment of new protected areas can help reproduce Indigenous hunting and fishing economies. They therefore help maintain the conditions of possibility for a future anti-capitalist and decolonial social transformation. Moreover, because protected areas remove land from extractive capital’s sphere of activity, their establishment entails real material concessions to Indigenous communities from extractive capital. However, in the absence of a clearly articulated program for a broader social transformation, these concessions help create the conditions for Indigenous peoples to consent to an economy based on extraction and are therefore fundamental to the hegemony of extractive capital in Northern Canada. Thus, protected areas are part of an unstable equilibrium of compromises that extractive hegemony is premised on.

States have long used protected areas to consolidate control over Indigenous Peoples’ territories, undermining community-based governance and access to resources. Despite this history, Indigenous Peoples around the world are increasingly designating their own protected areas to defend ancestral territories and assert self-determination. This paper examines Indigenous conservation politics in the Salween Peace Park in Kawthoolei, an autonomous territory of the Karen (Sino-Tibetan language-speaking peoples living primarily in Burma and along the Thai-Burma border). Local villagers and the Karen National Union envision the park as a grassroots initiative for peace in an area that has suffered decades of armed conflict between the Burmese military and the Karen movement for self-determination. Using the Salween Peace Park as a case study, we engage Indigenous scholarship on politics of recognition, resurgence, and refusal. We explore intersections and tensions between these political strategies, highlighting ways that Indigenous protected areas mobilize different forms of power to advance self-determination.

Conservation scientists increasingly recognise the value of Indigenous knowledge in conservation practice. However, studies of Indigenous knowledge and resource management systems have often tended to overlook the role and agency of more-than-human beings and ceremonial protocols in mediating human–environment relationships. This paper presents results from community-based research with Karen communities in the Salween Peace Park, an innovative Indigenous-led conservation initiative in the autonomous Karen territory of Kawthoolei, on the border between Thailand and Burma, or Myanmar. Our findings detail ways in which relations with more-than-human beings, including spirits, constitute environmental governance in Karen communities. These findings compel externally situated conservation biologists to take relational ontologies seriously, allowing local interlocutors’ lived experience, knowledge, and theory to challenge culturally bound concepts such as resources, management, and conservation. In order to transform conservation biology through Indigenous perspectives, it is essential to pay attention to the relational world in which many Indigenous Peoples live. Doing so helps support a conservation practice attentive to the interdependence of all life in ways that uphold Indigenous Peoples’ rights of self-determination, cultural identity, and social relations with their ancestral lands. We argue that attending to these relations is essential to building community-based conservation collaborations with Indigenous Peoples that are more effective, sustainable, and just.

Driven by spectacular growth over the last decade, the international cruise industry is constantly looking for new destinations to appeal to a different breed of traveler, one that seeks comfort alongside wilderness adventure. Meanwhile, national parks, long held up as icons of wilderness adventure, are increasingly governed through the logic of austerity politics and seek new revenue. These two distinct processes have started to provide increased opportunities for collaboration, introducing complex dynamics and power struggles at destinations and beyond. However, few studies have addressed these issues so far. Drawing on the global political ecology of tourism and conservation literature, this article examines the various entanglements between Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve in Canada and the cruise industry, and the implications they have for the destination as a whole. To better understand the many challenges facing park authorities and their partners, we employed a slate of qualitative methods, including document analysis, participant observation, and 30 semistructured interviews with key stakeholders. Results show that although the expectations of regional actors have not been met and the future of cruise tourism in Mingan is uncertain, park authorities continue to invest time and money to engage with the industry and adapt their facilities to this clientele. This raises questions about the real motives of park authorities and the contribution of this form of tourism to the sustainable development of the region.

Conservation actions most often occur in peopled seascapes and landscapes. As a result, conservation decisions cannot rely solely on evidence from the natural sciences, but must also be guided by the social sciences, the arts and the humanities. However, we are concerned that too much of the current attention is on research that serves an instrumental purpose, by which we mean that the social sciences are used to justify and promote status quo conservation practices. The reasons for engaging the social sciences, as well as the arts and the humanities, go well beyond making conservation more effective. In this editorial, we briefly reflect on how expanding the types of social science research and the contributions of the arts and the humanities can help to achieve the transformative potential of conservation.

It has long been claimed that a better understanding of human or social dimensions of environmental issues will improve conservation. The social sciences are one important means through which researchers and practitioners can attain that better understanding. Yet, a lack of awareness of the scope and uncertainty about the purpose of the conservation social sciences impedes the conservation community's effective engagement with the human dimensions. This paper examines the scope and purpose of eighteen subfields of classic, interdisciplinary and applied conservation social sciences and articulates ten distinct contributions that the social sciences can make to understanding and improving conservation. In brief, the conservation social sciences can be valuable to conservation for descriptive, diagnostic, disruptive, reflexive, generative, innovative, or instrumental reasons. This review and supporting materials provides a succinct yet comprehensive reference for conservation scientists and practitioners. We contend that the social sciences can help facilitate conservation policies, actions and outcomes that are more legitimate, salient, robust and effective.

[Extract] Biological Conservationwas published for the first time in October 1968 and is now celebrating 50 years of contributions. Significant birthdays sometimes promote reflection on accomplishments and events leading up to them. Whilst fifty years makes the journal look like a mere stripling compared to Proceedings of the Royal Society (date of birth 1665) and a relative newcomer compared to the established ecology journals like Journal of Ecology (d.o.b.1913) and Ecology (d.o.b. 1920), Biological Conservation was a pioneer in the field of conservation biology. It was the first journal dedicated to conservation science as a whole and is characterised by the wide range of topics and sub-disciplines covered, as well as by the large number of papers published.

Ecologists and conservation biologists conducting long-term research programs in the tropics must confront serious ethical challenges that revolve around economic inequalities, cultural differences, supporting the local communities as much as possible, and sharing the knowledge produced by the research. In this collective article, researchers share their experiences and perspectives in dealing with the ethical issues that arise during research activities and cannot be ignored.

Despite broad recognition of the value of social sciences and increasingly vocal calls for better engagement with the human element of conservation, the conservation social sciences remain misunderstood and underutilized in practice. The conservation social sciences can provide unique and important contributions to society's understanding of the relationships between humans and nature and to improving conservation practice and outcomes. There are 4 barriers-ideological, institutional, knowledge, and capacity-to meaningful integration of the social sciences into conservation. We provide practical guidance on overcoming these barriers to mainstream the social sciences in conservation science, practice, and policy. Broadly, we recommend fostering knowledge on the scope and contributions of the social sciences to conservation, including social scientists from the inception of interdisciplinary research projects, incorporating social science research and insights during all stages of conservation planning and implementation, building social science capacity at all scales in conservation organizations and agencies, and promoting engagement with the social sciences in and through global conservation policy-influencing organizations. Conservation social scientists, too, need to be willing to engage with natural science knowledge and to communicate insights and recommendations clearly. We urge the conservation community to move beyond superficial engagement with the conservation social sciences. A more inclusive and integrative conservation science-one that includes the natural and social sciences-will enable more ecologically effective and socially just conservation. Better collaboration among social scientists, natural scientists, practitioners, and policy makers will facilitate a renewed and more robust conservation. Mainstreaming the conservation social sciences will facilitate the uptake of the full range of insights and contributions from these fields into conservation policy and practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting all parts of human society. Like everyone else, conservation biologists are concerned first with how the pandemic will affect their families, friends, and people around the world. But we also have a duty to think about how it will impact the world's biodiversity and our ability to protect it, as well as how it might affect the training and careers of conservation researchers and practitioners. As editors of Biological Conservation, we have heard first-hand from colleagues, authors, and reviewers around the world about the problems they are facing, and their concerns for their students, their staff, and their research projects. Some of our colleagues have become infected with the virus. Field and lab work have largely shut down, while teaching and other communications have moved online, with consequences for training, data collection, and networking that are still unclear. Our colleagues and the media report some examples of reduced human pressures on natural ecosystems, cleaner air and water, and wildlife reclaiming contested habitats. Beyond the direct and immediate consequences of this particular virus, some have also started to think about emerging infectious diseases and their links with biodiversity loss, human activities, and issues of sustainability. As we write this, the pandemic is still accelerating in most countries, although there are hopeful signs of returns to normality in, for example, China. This editorial can therefore only be a snapshot of a quickly evolving situation. We hope, however, that we can offer some encouragement and insights for our colleagues in lockdown. Our world is changing, and the conservation community must be ready to respond.

Conservation actions most often occur in peopled seascapes and landscapes. As a result, conservation decisions cannot rely solely on evidence from the natural sciences, but must also be guided by the social sciences, the arts and the humanities. However, we are concerned that too much of the current attention is on research that serves an instrumental purpose, by which we mean that the social sciences are used to justify and promote status quo conservation practices. The reasons for engaging the social sciences, as well as the arts and the humanities, go well beyond making conservation more effective. In this editorial, we briefly reflect on how expanding the types of social science research and the contributions of the arts and the humanities can help to achieve the transformative potential of conservation.

Despite broad recognition of the value of social sciences and increasingly vocal calls for better engagement with the human element of conservation, the conservation social sciences remain misunderstood and underutilized in practice. The conservation social sciences can provide unique and important contributions to society's understanding of the relationships between humans and nature and to improving conservation practice and outcomes. There are 4 barriers—ideological, institutional, knowledge, and capacity—to meaningful integration of the social sciences into conservation. We provide practical guidance on overcoming these barriers to mainstream the social sciences in conservation science, practice, and policy. Broadly, we recommend fostering knowledge on the scope and contributions of the social sciences to conservation, including social scientists from the inception of interdisciplinary research projects, incorporating social science research and insights during all stages of conservation planning and implementation, building social science capacity at all scales in conservation organizations and agencies, and promoting engagement with the social sciences in and through global conservation policy‐influencing organizations. Conservation social scientists, too, need to be willing to engage with natural science knowledge and to communicate insights and recommendations clearly. We urge the conservation community to move beyond superficial engagement with the conservation social sciences. A more inclusive and integrative conservation science—one that includes the natural and social sciences—will enable more ecologically effective and socially just conservation. Better collaboration among social scientists, natural scientists, practitioners, and policy makers will facilitate a renewed and more robust conservation. Mainstreaming the conservation social sciences will facilitate the uptake of the full range of insights and contributions from these fields into conservation policy and practice.

In Thailand, through a range of “scientific” forest management regimes, upland forests have notoriously been classified in ways that restrict access to people who live in those forests, giving rise to significant debate and protest over the role of people in forests. The histories of these contests for control (and claims to that control) over land and forest in Thailand represent an important transformation in debates and contests over “science” and conservation. We examine the debates and discourses of science alongside debates on the role of local people in management and decision-making of natural resources. We argue that this history illustrates key shifts or transformations in the relationship between science, local knowledges and local movements. What was once largely seen as “anti-science” has emerged as drawing part of its legitimacy from science, exposing how science has changed, how local people’s movements have been a significant part of that, and how attitudes toward and engagements with science have changed. We identify that part of this historical shift is due to the greater deployment of “technologies of humility” (Jasanoff 2003), where claims based on science as well as local knowledge are understood in more nuanced and complementary (vs. adversarial) terms. We incorporate a reflection of our own efforts at solidarity science and the ways that humility has been a critical component of successful collaborations, and recognize that there are gaps to address in terms of understanding these shifts as gendered and racialized. This matters because these shifts in how the community forest movement has understood and employed science has direct implications for how communities make claims of expertise and legitimacy in Thailand.

Hypersaline environments pose major challenges to their microbial residents. Microorganisms have to cope with increased osmotic pressure and low water activity and therefore require specific adaptation mechanisms. Although mechanisms have already been thoroughly investigated in the green alga Dunaliella salina and some halophilic yeasts, strategies for osmoadaptation in other protistan groups (especially heterotrophs) are neither as well known nor as deeply investigated as for their prokaryotic counterpart. This is not only due to the recent awareness of the high protistan diversity and ecological relevance in hypersaline systems, but also due to methodological shortcomings. We provide the first experimental study on haloadaptation in heterotrophic microeukaryotes, using the halophilic ciliate Schmidingerothrix salinarum as a model organism. We established three approaches to investigate fundamental adaptation strategies known from prokaryotes. First, proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) spectroscopy was used for the detection, identification, and quantification of intracellular compatible solutes. Second, ion-imaging with cation-specific fluorescent dyes was employed to analyze changes in the relative ion concentrations in intact cells. Third, the effect of salt concentrations on the catalytic performance of S. salinarum malate dehydrogenase (MDH) and isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICDH) was determined. 1H-NMR spectroscopy identified glycine betaine (GB) and ectoine (Ect) as the main compatible solutes in S. salinarum. Moreover, a significant positive correlation of intracellular GB and Ect concentrations and external salinity was observed. The addition of exogenous GB, Ect, and choline (Ch) stimulated the cell growth notably, indicating that S. salinarum accumulates the solutes from the external medium. Addition of external 13C2-Ch resulted in conversion to 13C2-GB, indicating biosynthesis of GB from Ch. An increase of external salinity up to 21% did not result in an increase in cytoplasmic sodium concentration in S. salinarum. This, together with the decrease in the catalytic activities of MDH and ICDH at high salt concentration, demonstrates that S. salinarum employs the salt-out strategy for haloadaptation., Author summary Salinity is one of the strongest abiotic factors in nature and can have harmful effects on organisms. When a cell is placed in a high-salt environment, osmotic pressure pulls unbound water molecules out of the cell, leaving behind a highly concentrated cytoplasm, which impairs cell function and can cause cell death. Organisms living in high-salt environments therefore need to have specific adaptation mechanisms. For prokaryotes and fungi, such adaptations have been examined in detail. Protists—unicellular eukaryotes that constitute most of the eukaryotic diversity—are less well studied, mainly because of the lack of adequate methodological approaches. The scope of our study therefore includes the establishment of techniques to investigate fundamental salt adaptation strategies in protists and the application of these techniques to a halophilic, heterotroph model ciliate protist to reveal its specific haloadaptations. We provide the first experimental evidence for the biosynthesis and accumulation of two compatible solutes that the ciliate uses to combat increasing salt concentrations. One of these, glycine betaine, is widely distributed across kingdoms, while the other, ectoine, has to date only been identified in prokaryotes.

Ethnic politics are an important, but under-examined, dynamic in the restructuring of agrarian labour. This paper examines how the discursive construction of ethnic identity has facilitated the particular form of agrarian intensification and labour restructuring under way in the uplands of Thailand. Agricultural intensification, followed by the promotion of ‘safe’ and then ‘organic’ production, has relied upon the construction of Hmong farmers as environmentally destructive and in need of development, while Shan labour arriving from Burma are simultaneously constructed as ‘illegal migrants’ (as opposed to refugees), a social nuisance and hard workers, helping to make them into an available, willing and preferred labour force. We argue that the construction of ethnic identity in these instances enables the agricultural changes under way and, thus, the particularities of agricultural change cannot be understood without careful attention to ethnic politics.

Summary. — The logic of the market economy increasingly informs the design and the outcomes of conservation in the developing world. This paper uses case studies from Thailand and the Philippines to investigate this changing conservation landscape and argues first that such conservation governance does not abandon but rather rearticulates forms of coercive conservation and second that the particular manifestations of neoliberal conservation are shaped by the national policies, local histories, and livelihoods of recipient communities. The conclusion asserts that market-based conservation governance may constrain as well as support farmer freedom to pursue particular livelihoods, resulting in contradictory outcomes for neoliberal conservation governance. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Integrating knowledge from across the natural and social sciences is necessary to effectively address societal tradeoffs between human use of biological diversity and its preservation. Collaborative processes can change the ways decision makers think about scientific evidence, enhance levels of mutual trust and credibility, and advance the conservation policy discourse. Canada has responsibility for a large fraction of some major ecosystems, such as boreal forests, Arctic tundra, wetlands, and temperate and Arctic oceans. Stressors to biological diversity within these ecosystems arise from activities of the country's resource-based economy, as well as external drivers of environmental change. Effective management is complicated by incongruence between ecological and political boundaries and conflicting perspectives on social and economic goals. Many knowledge gaps about stressors and their management might be reduced through targeted, timely research. We identify 40 questions that, if addressed or answered, would advance research that has a high probability of supporting development of effective policies and management strategies for species, ecosystems, and ecological processes in Canada. A total of 396 candidate questions drawn from natural and social science disciplines were contributed by individuals with diverse organizational affiliations. These were collaboratively winnowed to 40 by our team of collaborators. The questions emphasize understanding ecosystems, the effects and mitigation of climate change, coordinating governance and management efforts across multiple jurisdictions, and examining relations between conservation policy and the social and economic well-being of Aboriginal peoples. The questions we identified provide potential links between evidence from the conservation sciences and formulation of policies for conservation and resource management. Our collaborative process of communication and engagement between scientists and decision makers for generating and prioritizing research questions at a national level could be a model for similar efforts beyond Canada.

Several Archstone Foundation funded projects developed and implemented training curricula on elder abuse for mandated reporters such as dentists, adult protective services workers, paramedics, and coroner investigators. Common education and training issues emerged, including the need to provide basic content on normal aging and the need for creating standardized trainings. Strategies include integrating elder abuse and neglect content into existing courses, building relationships with stakeholders, and customizing content and delivery to student needs and preferences. Projects developed relevant, practice-based content, decided on curriculum delivery methods, engaged learners, and provided feedback to them. A main outcome is the permanent institution of elder abuse content in training curricula.

The voluntary resettlement of people from national parks has emerged as a potential solution to long entrenched people-park conflicts. Yet critical examination of its associated policy and practice is rare. After identifying a trend toward voluntary resettlement in policy and practice, this article examines a resettlement project at Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam. An analysis of the agreement and negotiation processes with local communities reveals that genuine efforts and organizational commitments to voluntary resettlement can take on qualities associated with forced relocations. The Cat Tien National Park Conservation Project, supported by a major international conservation organization, operated on a principle of voluntary agreements while also applying international resettlement standards based on the World Bank's safeguard policies for involuntary resettlement. This apparent confusion in policy was further reflected in practice with the safeguard policies perversely reinforcing, rather than allev...

Participatory mapping has become an indispensable tool in the struggle of indigenous peoples to claim their rights to land and resources. It has also, however, come under criticism for its potential to increase state regulation, replace indigenous conceptions of territory and property, and to create conflict. This paper starts from the premise that the problem is not mapping per se, but the conception of abstract space we allow to frame and guide our representation of indigenous territories, resource use and management. The development of a more effective participatory mapping practice thus requires a critical engagement with the conception of space that participatory mappers are attempting to map. Using research conducted in two Karen communities in Thailand, this paper develops a conception of `dwelling space' meant to better capture the complex spatiality of indigenous resource use and serve as a potential alternative to abstract space. I conclude by arguing for a renewed practice of community-based mapping that takes seriously the spatial complexity of indigenous territory.

This article argues for the reconceptualization of park–people conflict, not as a process whereby state space erases or destroys local space, but as a moment of spatial reorganization resulting from the continual process of state and local spatial production. Such an approach allows for an examination both of the social and ecological outcomes of ongoing spatial reorganization associated with protected area establishment, and of moments of spatial complementarity and convergence, as well as conflict, between state and local spatialities. The utility of such an approach is demonstrated through an examination of two communities in Mae Tho National Park in northern Thailand. The article argues that an understanding of the role that the production of space plays in conservation conflicts can help to inform the ongoing development of new spatial strategies for conservation in inhabited landscapes.

Community-based mapping has become a necessary tool for development work worldwide – its adoption is near hegemonic. Mapping community land, however, can have unforeseen consequences in part due to its tendency to render what are complex configurations of social-ecological relationships into two-dimensional form. I argue that one of the key limitations to commonly practiced community-based mapping is the assumption that the spatial organization of resource use and management is an abstract entity that can be mapped independent of the social relations that produce it. This paper uses a case study from Northern Thailand to show how mapping techniques that fix and simplify fluid and complex associations can inadvertently prescribe changes to how residents manage their land, effectively becoming not only a tool for securing land tenure but also a tool for the spatial re-organization of land-use and management.

Forest resource management in Thailand bears the mark of its historical position on the margins of colonial power and its present position in a biodiversity hotspot. During the colonial era, British forestry in Burma and India had a fundamental influence on the knowledge and techniques used in Thai forest management. More recently, international conservation agendas and organisations have influenced the ways in which the Thai government regulates the forest within its boundaries. The treatment of forests as a national and international resource, defined in interaction with colonial neighbours and global partners, has resulted in legal constructs, spatially simplistic conservation mechanisms and a conception of nature ill-suited to managing forests as a local resource. This paper investigates the manifestation of Thailand's historical legacy in local park-people conflicts by drawing on research conducted in a region where the government is establishing a national park. It finds that the continued use of laws, tools and concepts derived from colonial and global influences undermines the forestry department's ability to address the contemporary challenge of managing forests as a local, as well as a national/global, commons.

Conservation policy and practice is increasingly turning towards market-based interventions to reconcile the growing conflicts between environmental conservation and rural livelihood needs. This short introductory paper to the special issue on “market-oriented conservation governance” critically investigates the growing commitment to markets as a means of meeting conservation objectives and livelihood security. We distinguish market oriented conservation from neoliberal conservation and argue for a grounded, empirically rich investigation into the passive and active promotion of markets in conservation landscapes – analysis which pays attention to how and why certain markets are promoted by ENGOs, governments and private sector, as well as how rural people negotiate livelihoods and markets when adjusting to conservation pressures. Such an approach takes seriously how the particularities of place, from local harvests to trans-local trade, shape market-oriented conservation in practice and expose the messiness of such ventures. The range of papers in this special issue show how neither neoliberal nor market-based interventions in conservation are uniform in character, impact and outcome, and that while identifying the patterns and logic behind these processes remains crucial, the basis for understanding how markets inform conservation, must be done by drawing on empirical data that speaks clearly to how actors variously engage the logic of market-driven conservation in terms of their histories and contemporary realities. We argue that doing so makes it possible to understand not only what is ‘new’ about contemporary market-oriented conservation but also its continuities with earlier forms of command and control conservation.

Integrating knowledge from across the natural and social sciences is necessary to effectively address societal tradeoffs between human use of biological diversity and its preservation. Collaborative processes can change the ways decision makers think about scientific evidence, enhance levels of mutual trust and credibility, and advance the conservation policy discourse. Canada has responsibility for a large fraction of some major ecosystems, such as boreal forests, Arctic tundra, wetlands, and temperate and Arctic oceans. Stressors to biological diversity within these ecosystems arise from activities of the country's resource-based economy, as well as external drivers of environmental change. Effective management is complicated by incongruence between ecological and political boundaries and conflicting perspectives on social and economic goals. Many knowledge gaps about stressors and their management might be reduced through targeted, timely research. We identify 40 questions that, if addressed or answered, would advance research that has a high probability of supporting development of effective policies and management strategies for species, ecosystems, and ecological processes in Canada. A total of 396 candidate questions drawn from natural and social science disciplines were contributed by individuals with diverse organizational affiliations. These were collaboratively winnowed to 40 by our team of collaborators. The questions emphasize understanding ecosystems, the effects and mitigation of climate change, coordinating governance and management efforts across multiple jurisdictions, and examining relations between conservation policy and the social and economic well-being of Aboriginal peoples. The questions we identified provide potential links between evidence from the conservation sciences and formulation of policies for conservation and resource management. Our collaborative process of communication and engagement between scientists and decision makers for generating and prioritizing research questions at a national level could be a model for similar efforts beyond Canada. Generación de Preguntas de Investigación Prioritarias para Informar a las Políticas y Gestión de la Conservación a Nivel Nacional

This article describes a new measuring device to investigate balancing strategies of human stance: the totter-slab, i.e., a standing plate suspended with steel cables to hooks on a steel frame. First, we analysed the physical properties of the device by recording free oscillations under different conditions [varying amplitude, mass and centre of mass (COM) height]. This allowed us to determine the eigenfrequency f and the damping coefficient D

Among prokaryotes, cyanobacteria are unique in having highly differentiated internal membrane systems. Like other Gram-negative bacteria, cyanobacteria such as Synechocystis sp. strain PCC 6803 have a cell envelope consisting of a plasma membrane, peptidoglycan layer, and outer membrane. In addition, these organisms have an internal system of thylakoid membranes where the electron transfer reactions of photosynthesis and respiration occur. A long-standing controversy concerning the cellular ultrastructures of these organisms has been whether the thylakoid membranes exist inside the cell as separate compartments, or if they have physical continuity with the plasma membrane. Advances in cellular preservation protocols as well as in image acquisition and manipulation techniques have facilitated a new examination of this topic. We have used a combination of electron microscopy techniques, including freeze-etched as well as freeze-substituted preparations, in conjunction with computer-aided image processing to generate highly detailed images of the membrane systems in Synechocystis cells. We show that the thylakoid membranes are in fact physically discontinuous from the plasma membrane in this cyanobacterium. Thylakoid membranes in Synechocystis sp. strain PCC 6803 thus represent bona fide intracellular organelles, the first example of such compartments in prokaryotic cells.