Effect of rotational shepherding on demographic and genetic connectivity of calcareous grassland plants

Response to habitat fragmentation may not be generalized among species, in particular for plant communities with a variety of dispersal traits. Calcareous grasslands are one of the most species-rich habitats in Central Europe, but abandonment of traditional management has caused a dramatic decline of calcareous grassland species. In the Southern Franconian Alb in Germany, reintroduction of rotational shepherding in previously abandoned grasslands has restored species diversity, and it has been suggested that sheep support seed dispersal among grasslands. We tested the effect of rotational shepherding on demographic and genetic connectivity of calcareous grassland specialist plants and whether the response of plant populations to shepherding was limited to species dispersed by animals (zoochory). Specifically, we tested competing dispersal models and source and focal patch properties to explain landscape connectivity with patch-occupancy data of 31 species. We fitted the same connectivity models to patch occupancy and nuclear microsatellite data for the herb Dianthus carthusianorum (Carthusian pink). For 27 species, patch connectivity was explained by dispersal by rotational shepherding regardless of adaptations to zoochory, whereas population size (16% species) and patch area (0% species) of source patches were not important predictors of patch occupancy in most species. [Correction made after online publication, February 25, 2014: Population size and patch area percentages were mistakenly inverted, and have now been fixed.] Microsite diversity of focal patches significantly increased the model variance explained by patch occupancy in 90% of the species. For D. carthusianorum, patch connectivity through rotational shepherding explained both patch occupancy and population genetic diversity. Our results suggest shepherding provides dispersal for multiple plant species regardless of their dispersal adaptations and thus offers a useful approach to restore plant diversity in fragmented calcareous grasslands

State of the art of technology in the food sector value chain towards the IoT

The food sector is challenged to provide safe and qualitative food to consumers at affordable price and to feed appropriately increasing population using natural resources, like soil and water, in a sustainable way. Consumers awareness about food origin, nutritional and wellness properties, attention to processed meals ingredients, due to health issues, and requests of new customized portions formats and receipts, related to habits changes, are also demanding trends in the sector. Several technologies can help to address those responsibilities of efficient, safe and environmental respectful production, and strict communication and connection with the consumers. This paper provides a state of the art of smart and other emerging technologies framed in the whole food supply-chain, to create a picture of the added value that the technology can bring to the sector. Moreover, the evolutions towards the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm adoption are presented

Silvopastoral systems as a tool for territorial sustainability and biodiversity

Rural and livestock population evolution in the inner north of Portugal has demonstrated a great regression with consequences for environment and nature conservation. In this context, and taking into account that pastoral activity has shaped the natural areas of mountain territories since its beginning and that territories are currently part of Natura 2000 network, rethinking the importance of such activity has become vital. The constraints affecting daily tasks performed by shepherds and livestock breeders as well as the installed social segregation are a strong limitation. However, current research developed in the context of nature conservation has demonstrated the importance of the landscape mosaic promoted by grazing in the preservation of priority habitats. In this way, it is urgent to assess the issue of shepherds and livestock breeders’ image in terms of their roles, relationships and concerns, as well as to assess pastoralism socioeconomics in regard to self-consumption, market and rural self-sufficiency. In this perspective, this work presents an analysis of the adaptation of grazing to current times, perceiving its limitations and success potential.This work is supported by European Structural and Investment Funds, FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme (COMPETE 2020) [Project No. 006971 (UID/SOC/04011)], and national funds, through FCT, Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under project UID/SOC/04011/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Quantitative dynamics of human empires

Quantitative modeling of social systems shows a large component of automatic drives in the behavior of individual humans and human society. Studies of the formation and breakdown of twenty diverse empires operating over almost three thousand years describe these processes with utmost clarity and pardigmatic simplicity. Taking territorial expansion as the basic parameter, we show that it can e represented in time by a single logistic equation in spite of the complicated sequences of events usually reported by historians. The driving forces of empire, leading to expansion and saturation at 14 days of travel from the capital, can be reduced to testosterone and progesterone

Cost Effective Utilization of Transportation Services in Today’s Business Environment-A Logistics Overview

The function of transportation is the main factor which determines the speed and efficiency of movement of goods from one place to another. The advancement in transportation, its techniques and principles helps in the improvement of quality of movement of goods, its speed of delivery, efficiency in operation cost, quality of service and the better utilization of available resources. Transportation places a crucial role in the global supply chain and logistics function in any organization. Considering the current situation, it is evident that a strong supply chain logistics system needs a fool proof transportation system for the effective movement of goods from the source to manufacturing units till it reach the consumer. Hence the purpose of this study is to define the various roles transport plays with regards to future improvements. This paper is undertaken with the aim of helping the people working in logistics department, students and planners of transportation managers to understand and explore the various methods, views and application of transportation and its application practically

Development and applications of a model for cellular response to multiple chemotactic cues

The chemotactic response of a cell population to a single chemical species has been characterized experimentally for many cell types and has been extensively studied from a theoretical standpoint. However, cells frequently have multiple receptor types and can detect and respond chemotactically to more than one chemical. How these signals are integrated within the cell is not known, and we therefore adopt a macroscopic phenomenological approach to this problem. In this paper we derive and analyze chemotactic models based on partial differential (chemotaxis) equations for cell movement in response to multiple chemotactic cues. Our derivation generalizes the approach of Othmer and Stevens [29], who have recently developed a modeling framework for studying different chemotactic responses to a single chemical species. The importance of such a generalization is illustrated by the effect of multiple chemical cues on the chemotactic sensitivity and the spatial pattern of cell densities in several examples. We demonstrate that the model can generate the complex patterns observed on the skin of certain animal species and we indicate how the chemotactic response can be viewed as a form of positional indicator

Samuel Hearne, The Denesuline, and The Beaver: Zoology and Its Effect in an Early Canadian Natural-Cultural Contact Zone

Recent scholarship on Samuel Hearne's A Journey to the Northern Ocean (1795) has highlighted how Hearne's journey of exploration functioned to demonstrate the Hudson's Bay Company's strategic geopolitical worth, obscure the violence of its colonialist enterprise, and generate images of an empty North conducive to colonial settlement. Drawing on such scholarship, this essay attempts to nuance statements regarding Hearne's complicity in “emptying” the North by showing how the Journey establishes images of the Canadian North as neither completely barren nor fertile enough for settlement. Applying a natural-cultural contact zone perspective on Hearne's old text, I argue that the anthropocentric bias of the Journey's reception has impeded the realization that Hearne's zoological descriptions and sometimes sophisticated ecological contemplations owe much to the Denesuline who guide his travels. In part through his “beaver science”, Hearne deliberately opposes prospects of further colonization based on ideas of systemic expansion of the fur trade detached from the realities of local environmental conditions. His concern regarding the anthropomorphism and uncritical use of cultural metaphors in the emerging science of zoology nevertheless causes Hearne's “beaver science” to consolidate the distinctly anthropocentric and objectifying qualities of natural science that ultimately facilitate the exploitative activities of the Hudson's Bay Company