GRASS UTILIZATION IN GROWING FINISHING BÍSARO PIGS (85-107 KG). PERFORMANCE AND CARCASS COMPOSITION

The use of different quantities of vegetables, forages or fresh grass as fodder for growing-finishing pigs is an important factor of the northern Portugal traditional system. The increasing development of swine production in outdoor systems, extensive and organic production, turns to upcoming natural diets, in which grass performs a significant part. With regard to this, some investigation has been made concerning the use of fibre-rich feed ingredients in pig nutrition. Metabolic effects of its ingestion are analysed concerning different sights (economical, social, environmental and physiological ones). The aim of this work was to study the effects of grass utilization in the diets on performances of finishing Bísaro pigs. A total of 22 pigs (16 castrated males and 6 females) was housed outdoor and fed ad libitum (37 – 85 kg live weight) with a growing diet and then transferred to an indoor system (with free access to an outdoor area) for 49 days, according to 3 different treatments: 100% concentrate (C), 75% concentrate + ad libitum grass (CE75), 50% concentrate + ad libitum grass (CE50). The grass was supplied and its intake registered on a daily basis. Every 14 days, the pigs were weighted and their back fat (P2 in vivo) measured. After slaughter (average weight of 107 kg LW), yield and ½ left carcass characteristics were controlled. During the outdoor growing phase, the ADG was 513 g/day. During the indoor finishing phase, the increase grass intake was proportional to the reduction of concentrate in the diet. The ADG (g) and the fat deposition (P2 cm) were significantly different (P<0,05) in the 3 treatments (ADG: C=641, CE75=467, CE50=356 and: C=11,4, CE75=+9,5, CE50=+6,2). The empty body weight (kg) was also proportional to the intake of concentrate (C=116,2; CE75=107,7; CE50=102,2). Comparatively to the weight of the body parts, pigs that had higher intake of grass and lower of concentrate showed a higher % of shoulder (P<0,05; C=20,4, CE75=21,7, CE50=22,2) and the pH45min of CE carcasses was significantly higher (P<0,05). As a conclusion, concentrate substitution for grass showed a slower growing rate, thinner carcasses and a high technological quality. Neverthelles variability (CV %) of the productive parameters at the end of this study were higher in the treatments that included grass: live weight (C= 10,5%; C75=10,7%; C50=14,3%), finishing ADG (C=24%; C75=37%, C50=42%), and final fat (C=37%; C75=32%, C50=52%). These values suggest that the utilization of fibrous feeds in growing-finishing swine may be one of the possible explanations of the more heterogeneous products and carcasses found in the traditional or extensive systems, common users of fibrous feeds in the carcass finishing phase

Rarity of monodominance in hyperdiverse Amazonian forests.

Tropical forests are known for their high diversity. Yet, forest patches do occur in the tropics where a single tree species is dominant. Such "monodominant" forests are known from all of the main tropical regions. For Amazonia, we sampled the occurrence of monodominance in a massive, basin-wide database of forest-inventory plots from the Amazon Tree Diversity Network (ATDN). Utilizing a simple defining metric of at least half of the trees ≥ 10 cm diameter belonging to one species, we found only a few occurrences of monodominance in Amazonia, and the phenomenon was not significantly linked to previously hypothesized life history traits such wood density, seed mass, ectomycorrhizal associations, or Rhizobium nodulation. In our analysis, coppicing (the formation of sprouts at the base of the tree or on roots) was the only trait significantly linked to monodominance. While at specific locales coppicing or ectomycorrhizal associations may confer a considerable advantage to a tree species and lead to its monodominance, very few species have these traits. Mining of the ATDN dataset suggests that monodominance is quite rare in Amazonia, and may be linked primarily to edaphic factors

Gestão por competências em organizações de governo

Ao longo dos últimos anos vem se ampliando os espaços e o interesse, no meio acadêmico e empresarial, pelas discussões sobre uso da abordagem da competência como marco importante para as atividades de gestão de recursos humanos. A difusão dessa abordagem entre as organizações públicas brasileiras é, entretanto, bem mais recente, e conta, ainda hoje, com um número insuficiente de estudos e publicações. É esta a razão da importância e pertinência da publicação do livro " Gestão por competências em organizações de governo"Número de páginas: 100 p.Gestão de PessoasISBN 85-256-0046-

Geographic patterns of tree dispersal modes in Amazonia and their ecological correlates

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MAim: To investigate the geographic patterns and ecological correlates in the geographic distribution of the most common tree dispersal modes in Amazonia (endozoochory, synzoochory, anemochory and hydrochory). We examined if the proportional abundance of these dispersal modes could be explained by the availability of dispersal agents (disperser-availability hypothesis) and/or the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits (resource-availability hypothesis). Time period: Tree-inventory plots established between 1934 and 2019. Major taxa studied: Trees with a diameter at breast height (DBH) ≥ 9.55 cm. Location: Amazonia, here defined as the lowland rain forests of the Amazon River basin and the Guiana Shield. Methods: We assigned dispersal modes to a total of 5433 species and morphospecies within 1877 tree-inventory plots across terra-firme, seasonally flooded, and permanently flooded forests. We investigated geographic patterns in the proportional abundance of dispersal modes. We performed an abundance-weighted mean pairwise distance (MPD) test and fit generalized linear models (GLMs) to explain the geographic distribution of dispersal modes. Results: Anemochory was significantly, positively associated with mean annual wind speed, and hydrochory was significantly higher in flooded forests. Dispersal modes did not consistently show significant associations with the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits. A lower dissimilarity in dispersal modes, resulting from a higher dominance of endozoochory, occurred in terra-firme forests (excluding podzols) compared to flooded forests. Main conclusions: The disperser-availability hypothesis was well supported for abiotic dispersal modes (anemochory and hydrochory). The availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits seems an unlikely explanation for the distribution of dispersal modes in Amazonia. The association between frugivores and the proportional abundance of zoochory requires further research, as tree recruitment not only depends on dispersal vectors but also on conditions that favour or limit seedling recruitment across forest types

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio