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In order to reconstruct local environmental changes affecting wetlands in middle mountain ranges, this study presents a multi-proxy analysis of the Pialeloup peat record on the Béage Plateau (South-Eastern Massif Central, France). It combines macrofossil, beetle, palynological, and geochemical data. The results are compared with other palaeoecological studies and archaeological data from the Massif Central, Jura Mountains and Alpine regions to discuss the links between local environmental changes and socio-economical dynamics at larger scales. Based on this approach, early environmental changes were highlighted between 6500 and 4800 BC, most certainly due to animal trampling on the Pialeloup bog. These events seem synchronous with human presence from the Late Mesolithic to Early Neolithic. It suggested that wild animals and human/livestock might have frequented the Béage Plateau wetlands. Then, long-term landscape management was documented for the last 3000 years. Local palaeoecological insights (synanthropic plants, beech-forest clearings, increasing erosion) and archaeological evidence for human settlements (pottery, millstones, and anthropogenic soils) were revealed to start during the Iron Age (400–200 BC). From the Late Iron Age to the Early Medieval period (150 BC–AD 725), human activities combined livestock pasture and local cereal cultivation (such as rye, Secale cereale, as a winter crop). This long-term management produced an open landscape where only small beech/fir woods persisted (Fagus sylvatica/Abies alba). This step was essential for the further development of extensive livestock grazing since the Medieval period in this region. International audience

Climate change, with its increasing frequency of environmental disturbances puts pressures on the livestock sector. To deal with these pressures, more complex traits such as resilience must be considered in our management strategies and in our breeding programs. Resilient animals respond well to environmental challenges, and have a decreased probability of needing assistance to overcome them. This paper discusses the need for operational measures of resilience that can be deployed at large scale across different farm types and livestock species. Such measures are needed to provide more precise phenotypes of resilience for use in farm management, but also for use in animal breeding. Any measure of response and recovery reflects both the animals resilience and the perceived size of the environmental disturbance, which can vary over time, depending on multiple animal and farm-related contexts. Therefore, and because universal definitions of resilience are too broad to be operational, we argue that resilience should be seen as a latent construct that cannot be directly measured and selected for. This leads to the following two points: (1) any postulated operational measure of resilience to a disturbance should be constructed from a sufficient number of indicators that each individually capture different facets of the resilience, such that when combined they better reflect the full resilience response; and (2) any postulated operational measure of resilience will have to be validated against reference measures that are the accumulated consequences of good resilience (e.g. productive lifespan or ability to re-calve). In a dairy cow case study, a practical resilience definition for dairy cattle was proposed and tested based on a scoring system containing several categories. In general terms and within a given parity, a cow receives plus points for each calving, and for a shorter calving interval, fewer inseminations and a higher milk production compared to her herd peers. She will receive minus points in case the number of inseminations increases, for each curative treatment day, and if her milk production is lower compared to her herd peers. By using readily available farm data, we were able to assess a practical lifetime resilience score, based on which cows can then be ranked within the herd. Cows that reach a next parity were shown to have a higher rank than cows that are culled before the next parity. To examine the usefulness of such a score, this resilience ranking was linked to two precision livestock technology-derived measures, related to milk yield deviations and accelerometer-derived deviations. Higher resilience ranking cows had fewer drops in milk yield and a more stable activity pattern during the lactation. This case study, taking the operational approach to quantifying and defining resilience, shows the promise of a data-driven approach for identifying resilience measures when applied within a biologically logical framework. ispartof: Peer Community Journal vol:2 status: published

Current theories of plant domestication are based on localized founder models in which single or multiple domestications occur as a progressive result of adaptation processes, but anomalies that do not fit within this perspective have been accumulating.\ud \ud We describe developments in archaeology and genetics over the past decade in which cultural connections between groups stretch back much further in time than was previously realized, and over wide geographic distances. Weak selection for domestication substantially pre-dates domestication and/or cultivation practices, large populations appear to have been maintained throughout the emergence of domesticates, and the resulting forms were not necessarily an improvement in terms of yield.\ud \ud We present a framework in which the process of domestication evolved as a landscape-level process involving large populations connected through sustained long-term human contact over large distances from which domesticate forms emerged in a complex manner as an adaptive reaction to long-term exploitation that did not necessarily provide immediate benefits.\ud \ud The landscape framework addresses several anomalies and radically changes the dynamic visualization of the evolution of domestication. It also opens up a list of new questions regarding the mechanisms of selection and the assembly of domestication syndrome alleles, and obliges a profound rethink of the progressive nature of domestication and human cultural evolution.\ud \ud The evidence from ancient crops over the past decade challenges some of our most basic assumptions about the process of domestication. The emergence of crops has been viewed as a technologically progressive process in which single or multiple localized populations adapt to human environments in response to cultivation. By contrast, new genetic and archaeological evidence reveals a slow process that involved large populations over wide areas with unexpectedly sustained cultural connections in deep time. We review evidence that calls for a new landscape framework of crop origins. Evolutionary processes operate across vast distances of landscape and time, and the origins of domesticates are complex. The domestication bottleneck is a redundant concept and the progressive nature of domestication is in doubt.

AbstractRobots are widely expected—and pushed—to transform open-field agriculture, but these visions remain wedded to optimizing monocultural farming systems. Meanwhile there is little pull for automation from ecology-based, diversified farming realms. Noting this gap, we here explore the potential for robots to foster an agroecological approach to crop production. The research was situated in The Netherlands within the case of pixel cropping, a nascent farming method in which multiple food and service crops are planted together in diverse assemblages employing agroecological practices such as intercropping and biological pest control. Around this case we engaged with a variety of specialists in discussion groups, workshops, and design challenges to explore the potential of field robots to meet the multifaceted demands of highly diverse agroecological cropping systems. This generated a spectrum of imaginations for how automated tools might—or might not—be appropriately used, ranging from fully automated visions, to collaborative scenarios, to fully analogue prototypes. We found that automating agroecological cropping systems requires finding ways to imbue the ethos of agroecology into designed tools, thereby seeking to overcome tensions between production aims and other forms of social and ecological care. We conclude that a rethinking of automation is necessary for agroecological contexts: not as a blueprint for replacing humans, but making room for analogue and hybrid forms of agricultural work. These findings highlight a need for design processes which include a diversity of actors, involve iterative design cycles, and incorporate feedback between designers, practitioners, tools, and cropping systems.

In the last decade and a half, emerging vector-borne diseases have become a substantial threat to cattle across Europe. To mitigate the impact of the emergence of new diseases, outbreaks must be detected early. However, the clinical signs associated with many diseases may be nonspecific. Furthermore, there is often a delay in the development of new diagnostic tests for novel pathogens which limits the ability to detect emerging disease in the initial stages. Syndromic Surveillance has been proposed as an additional surveillance method that could augment traditional methods by detecting aberrations in non-specific disease indicators. The aim of this study was to develop a syndromic surveillance system for Irish dairy herds based on routinely collected milk recording and meteorological data. We sought to determine whether the system would have detected the 2012 Schmallenberg virus (SBV) incursion into Ireland earlier than conventional surveillance methods. Using 7,743,138 milk recordings from 730,724 cows in 7037 herds between 2007 and 2012, linear mixed-effects models were developed to predict milk yield and alarms generated with temporally clustered deviations from predicted values. Additionally, hotspot spatial analyses were conducted at corresponding time points. Using a range of thresholds, our model generated alarms throughout September 2012, between 4 and 6 weeks prior to the first laboratory confirmation of SBV in Ireland. This system for monitoring milk yield represents both a potentially useful tool for early detection of disease, and a valuable foundation for developing similar tools using other metrics. Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Biogenic methane is estimated to account for one-fifth of the natural gas worldwide and there is great interest in controlling methane from different sources. Biogenic coalbed methane (CBM) production relies on syntrophic associations between fermentative bacteria and methanogenic archaea to anaerobically degrade recalcitrant coal and produce methanogenic substrates. However, very little is known about how differences in geochemistry, hydrology, and microbial community composition influence subsurface carbon utilization and CBM production. The addition of an amendment consisting of microalgal biomass has previously been shown to increase CBM production while providing the possibility of a closed-loop fossil system where waste (production water) is used to grow algae to ultimately produce energy (methane). However, the efficiency of enhancing CBM production under different redox conditions remains unresolved. In this study, we focused on the U.S. Geological Survey's Birney test site (Montana, USA) that has nine wells vertically accessing four coal seams with varying geochemistry (low and high sulfate (SO42−)) and methane production rates. We used organic matter (OM) in the form of algal biomass to discern the effect of this amendment on OM degradation and microbially enhanced CBM production potential under different geochemical constraints. We tracked changes in community composition, OM composition, organic carbon (OC) concentration, methane production, and nutrients in batch systems over six months. Methane production was detected only in microcosms from low SO42− wells (168 to 800 μg methane per gram of coal). The OC consumption varied across time for all wells and the variation was greatest for the low SO42− wells. Different groups of syntrophic bacteria were associated with net‑carbon consuming microcosms, and specifically Syntrophorhabdus was identified with several different statistical methods as a potentially important coal degrader. Results from this study provide insight into potential coal-degraders, the compositional changes in some of the different OM fractions, and trends in carbon consumption related to methane production across coal seams along the vertical SO42− gradient.

Abstract Despite its status as a highly-prized and coveted fungi in gastronomy, many aspects of the subterranean life cycle of the Burgundy truffle (Tuber aestivum) are still unknown, because in situ observations of the formation and maturation of truffle fruitbodies remain difficult. Here, we adopted a suite of archaeological fine-scale excavating techniques to provide unique spatiotemporal snapshots of Burgundy truffle growth at three sites in southern Germany. We also recorded the relative position, fresh weight, maturity level and genotype composition of all excavated fruitbodies. Varying by a factor of thousand, the fresh weight of 73 truffle ranged from 0.1 to 103.2 g, with individual maturity levels likely representing different life cycle stages from completely unripe to fully ripe and even decaying. While only a slightly positive relationship between fruitbody weight and maturity level was found, our results suggest that genetically distinct specimens can exhibit different life cycle stages at the same period of time and under the same environmental conditions. We therefore argue that truffles are likely able to grow, mature and ripe simultaneously between early summer and late winter of the following year. Our case study should encourage further eco-archaeological truffle excavations under different biogeographic settings and at different seasons of the year to gain deeper insights into the fungi's subterranean ecology. The expected cross-disciplinary findings will help truffle hunters and farmers to improve their harvest practices and management strategies.