https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/202689?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social%20media&utm_campaign=Collection%20Highlights&utm_content=RBG%20Victoria#page/7/mode/1up
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Farmer Perceptions and Behaviors Related to Wildlife

 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12364/full

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Below-ground complementarity effects in a grassland biodiversity experiment are related to deep-rooting species 

Natalie J. Oram, Janneke M. Ravenek, Kathryn E. Barry,Alexandra Weigeltz Hongmei Chen, Arthur Gessler, Annette Gockele, Hans de Kroon, Jan Willem van der Paauw, Michael Scherer-Lorenzen,     Annemiek Smit-Tiekstra, Jasper van Ruijven, Liesje Mommer.

1. Below-ground resource partitioning is often proposed as the underlying mechanism for the positive relationship between plant species richness and productivity. For example, if species have different root distributions, a mixture of plant species may be able to use the available resources more completely than the individual species in a monoculture. However, there is little experimental evidence for differentiation in vertical root distributions among species and its contribution to biodiversity effects.
2. We determined species-specific root standing biomass over depth using molecular techniques (real-time qPCR) in a large grassland biodiversity experiment (one to eight plant species mixtures), in 2 years. Species-specific root biomass data were used to disentangle the effects of positive interactions between species (complementarity effects) and effects due to dominance of productive species (selection effects) on root biomass in mixtures. In a next step, these biodiversity effects were linked to the diversity of rooting depths and the averaged rooting depth of the community.
3. Root biomass increased with species richness. This was mainly due to positive interactions (the complementarity effect), which increased with species richness below-ground. In contrast, the selection effect decreased with species richness. Although there was considerable variation in vertical root distribution between species in monocultures, the diversity of rooting strategies did not explain the complementarity effect. Rather, the abundance of deep-rooting species in mixtures (i.e. high community-weighted mean) was significantly related to the complementarity effect. Comparing the “predicted” root distribution (based on monocultures) to the actual distribution in mixtures, we found that mixtures rooted deeper than expected, but this did not better explain the complementarity effect.
4. Synthesis. This study demonstrates that vertical root distributions of species provide only subtle evidence for resource partitioning. We found no evidence that functional diversity in vertical rooting patterns was important for the complementarity effect, in contrast to our expectation that the enhancement of productivity was due to resource partitioning. Alternatively, we found significant but weak relationships between the complementarity effect and deep-rooting communities, based on the community-weighted mean root distribution. This suggests that factors other than below-ground resource partitioning alone may drive the biodiversity–productivity relationship.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2745.12877/full

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Geographic mosaics and changing rates of cereal domestication 

Robin G. Allaby, Chris Stevens, Leilani Lucas, Osamu Maeda, Dorian Q. Fuller

 

Domestication is the process by which plants or animals evolved to fit a human-managed environment, and it is marked by innovations in plant morphology and anatomy that are in turn correlated with new human behaviours and technologies for harvesting, storage and field preparation. Archaeobotanical evidence has revealed that domestication was a protracted process taking thousands of plant generations. Within this protracted process there were changes in the selection pressures for domestication traits as well as variation across a geographic mosaic of wild and cultivated populations. Quantitative data allow us to estimate the changing selection coefficients for the evolution of non-shattering (domestic-type seed dispersal) in Asian rice (Oryza sativa L.), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccon (Shrank) Schübl.) and einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum L.). These data indicate that selection coefficients tended to be low, but also that there were inflection points at which selection increased considerably. For rice, selection coefficients of the order of 0.001 prior to 5500 BC shifted to greater than 0.003 between 5000 and 4500 BC, before falling again as the domestication process ended 4000–3500 BC. In barley and the two wheats selection was strongest between 8500 and 7500 BC. The slow start of domestication may indicate that initial selection began in the Pleistocene glacial era.

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/372/1735/20160429

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Nature Isn't Real

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The role of agriculture in destabilizing the Earth system at the planetary scale

Through examining nine planetary boundaries, or “safe limits”: land-system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, biosphere integrity, climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol loading, and introduction of novel entities. Two planetary boundaries have been fully transgressed, i.e., are at high risk, biosphere integrity and biogeochemical flows, and agriculture has been the major driver of the transgression. Three are in a zone of uncertainty i.e., at increasing risk, with agriculture the major driver of two of those, land-system change and freshwater use, and a significant contributor to the third, climate change. Agriculture is also a significant or major contributor to change for many of those planetary boundaries still in the safe zone. To reduce the role of agriculture in transgressing planetary boundaries, many interventions will be needed, including those in broader food systems. 

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https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss4/art8/

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Way too much livestock!!!

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http://www.etcgroup.org/whowillfeedus
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http://www.etcgroup.org/whowillfeedus
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