Cereal progenitors differ in stand harvest characteristics from related wild grasses

The domestication of crops in the Fertile Crescent began approximately 10,000 years ago indicating a change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary, agriculture-based existence. The exploitation of wild plants changed during this transition, such that a small number of crops were domesticated from the broader range of species gathered from the wild. However, the reasons for this change are unclear. Previous studies have shown unexpectedly that crop progenitors are not consistently higher yielding than related wild grass species, when growing without competition. In this study, we replicate more closely natural competition within wild stands, using two greenhouse experiments to investigate whether cereal progenitors exhibit a greater seed yield per unit area than related wild species that were not domesticated. Stands of cereal progenitors do not provide a greater total seed yield per unit ground area than related wild species, but these crop progenitors do have greater reproductive efficiency than closely related wild species, with nearly twice the harvest index (the ratio of harvested seeds to total shoot dry mass). These differences arise because the progenitors have greater seed yield per tiller than closely related wild species, due to larger individual seed size but no reduction in seed number per tiller. The harvest characteristics of cereal progenitors may have made them a more attractive prospect than closely related wild species for the early cultivators who first planted these species, or could suggest an ecological filtering mechanism. Synthesis. Overall, we show that the maintenance of a high harvest index under competition, the packaging of seed in large tillers, and large seeds, consistently distinguish crop progenitors from closely related wild grass species. However, the archaeological significance of these findings remains unclear, since a number of more distantly related species, including wild oats, have an equally high or higher harvest index and yield than some of the progenitor species. Domestication of the earliest cereal crops from the pool of wild species available cannot therefore be explained solely by species differences in yield and harvest characteristics, and must also consider other plant traits

Skunk and Raccoon Rabies in the Eastern United States: Temporal and Spatial Analysis

Since 1981, an epizootic of raccoon rabies has spread throughout the eastern United States. A concomitant increase in reported rabies cases in skunks has raised concerns that an independent maintenance cycle of rabies virus in skunks could become established, affecting current strategies of wildlife rabies control programs. Rabies surveillance data from 1981 through 2000 obtained from the health departments of 11 eastern states were used to analyze temporal and spatial characteristics of rabies epizootics in each species. Spatial analysis indicated that epizootics in raccoons and skunks moved in a similar direction from 1990 to 2000. Temporal regression analysis showed that the number of rabid raccoons predicted the number of rabid skunks through time, with a 1-month lag. In areas where the raccoon rabies virus variant is enzootic, spatio-temporal analysis does not provide evidence that this rabies virus variant is currently cycling independently among skunks

Seasonality and the dynamics of infectious diseases

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73860/1/j.1461-0248.2005.00879.x.pd