This issue includes two special clusters: “Teaching v. Research,” edited by Katie Little, and “The Time of Psychoanalysis,” edited by Ruth Evans and R. D. Perry. It also includes three essays on teaching and contributions to three of our columns: “How I Teach,” “Conversations,” and “Histories.”

“Statistical Fictions: Nineteenth-Century Narrative and the Probability of Reform” explores the rise of statistically inflected narratives in the period spanning from 1826 to 1876. It interweaves nineteenth-century writings on mathematics and logic with novels and other works that rely on narrative to argue that mid-century statistical and probabilistic reasoning developed in dialogue with experiments in narrative form and projects of social reform. In statistical narratives, a range of literary forms such as science fiction, dialogue, detective fiction, and the realist novel provide the structures through which both authors and readers think through social problems involving populations. These narratives employ a particular version of statistical thinking that conceives of the world typologically rather than in temporal terms, and challenges the way that people were typically categorized into groups. By doing so, they expose how moralizing certain kinds of social forms, such as theories of character, allows prejudice to become incorporated into social structures and institutions.This project focuses primarily on the work of four women—Mary Shelley, Florence Nightingale, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and George Eliot—all of whom found in their literary writing a way of both disseminating and criticizing the claims of contemporary science while reaching a broad and inclusive audience. At the same time, all four were interested in using that science to think through the possibilities and limits of self-determination and the power of literature to effect practical social change. They all sought limits to the power of such forces as evolution, heredity, and contagion to determine the lives of individuals, and they designed their innovative literary versions of statistical modeling to reduce suffering in what they regarded as a society in need of healing.

The influence of predator-prey systems and interactions on wildlife passage use by mammals has received little attention to date. Predator-prey systems vary throughout the world and across regions. Europe and North America are characterised largely by predator-prey systems in which predator and prey have co-evolved. However, large predators are absent from many areas, enabling prey species (e.g., ungulates) to range in predator-free environments. In mainland Australia, the main predator species are evolutionary novel and have not co-evolved with native prey. These fundamental differences in predator-prey systems potentially influence species’ behavior and, it is argued, species’ response to passage environments. Predator-prey systems also operate at different spatial scales. The spatial distribution of large mammals is influenced by regional scale predator-prey interactions that potentially influence the species encountering passages. Medium-sized and small mammals tend to operate at more refined geographical scales and passage avoidance or acceptance may be more influenced by localised predator-prey interactions and in response to the passage structure. Biotic interactions at passage approaches and within passage confines potentially influence the successful transit of the passage. This paper examines the documented and potential influence of predator-prey interactions on wildlife passage use by mammals, and passage effects on predator and prey interactions. It considers predator-prey relationships relative to various spatial scales and takes into account biotic interactions that may occur at passage sites. The potential influences of relaxed selection and co-evolution of predator and prey on predator-prey systems and mammalian responses to passage environments are particularly addressed. It is concluded that extrapolation of management recommendations resulting from passage studies under different predator-prey systems need to be treated cautiously. The influence of predator-prey interactions on passage response by mammalian fauna appears to have been underestimated in passage studies to date and warrants further scientific investigation.