This dissertation is an ethnographic study of how environmental conservation and ecotourism are contexts for how people sort out what is at stake in living among the Raja Ampat islands of Indonesia’s West Papua Province. Through examining ways that people seek to protect areas and things inhabiting the surrounding land and seascape, I evaluate situations where people identify what is valuable to them, how those values influence ethical actions, as well as consequences of acting unethically toward the environment or other people. The study highlights efforts of Beteo and Ma’ya people to figure out how to balance the protection of coral reefs and forest zones while also seeking improved livelihoods. It presents accounts of environmental conservation practices and ecotourism around Waigeo Island – the largest and northernmost island of the Raja Ampat area – because it is the center of tourism activity and migration of Indonesians to the region. Waigeo has also become a zone of conflicts between locals and outsiders over access to and control of natural resources in coastal West Papua. Conservation and tourism have become a context for how Beteo and Ma’ya residents have identified options, developed strategies and negotiated conflicts within and across boundaries of social difference as they seek to chart a better life.The study focuses on instances where environmental values overlap and diverge to probe the possibility that different forms of care may be analogous, congruent, or at least recognizable by people with different reasons for protecting nature. I document situations when people were forced to reconcile apparently incommensurable practices. I evaluate to what extent marine protected areas are symmetrical with ritual harvest prohibitions known as sasi. I assess to what extent closed fishing grounds reflect Indonesian Evangelical Protestant Church ideals of a moral community, or whether they can be considered alongside non-Christian understanding of forest spirit realms where one is at risk of being eaten by witches or destroyed by amoral nature entities. By focusing on marine conservation and tourism interactions in coastal West Papua, I document the capacity of people to adapt, transpose or otherwise incorporate different environmental norms into their lives.

The spatiotemporal diversity of Ca2+ signals enables them to mediate diverse functions inside the same cell; this diversity arises in part from the position, arrangement, and communication between Ca2+ permeable channels. The work presented in this thesis describes various approaches for determining how these complex Ca2+ signals are generated. The first part of this dissertation describes the construction of two types of microscopes which enhance spatiotemporal resolution of Ca2+ signals. The spinning-spot shadowless total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (chapter 2) provides enhanced shadow-free imaging of Ca2+ signals arising near the plasma membrane. A simplified lattice light-sheet microscope (chapter 3) enables high spatial resolution and 3D visualization of Ca2+ signals throughout the cell. This dissertation also describes new analytic techniques for understanding local Ca2+ signals. Chapter 4 describes a new set of algorithms and software for detecting and analyzing of local calcium signals. Chapter 5 details the precision with which the location of channels underlying local Ca2+ signals can be determined. In the next two chapters, these techniques are applied to study signaling pathways involving two important Ca2+ permeable channels. In chapter 6, Ca2+ signals generated by the inositol trisphosphate receptor (IP3R) are used to infer the diffusion coefficient of its agonist, IP3, leading to the conclusion that IP3 is a local, rather than global, messenger. Chapter 7 details work which shows that the mechanosensitive Ca2+ channel Piezo1 diffuses in the plasma membrane and that its activity is enriched in regions where cells generate mechanical traction forces.