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International audience; Food safety crises involving persistent organic pollutants (POPs) lead to systematic slaughter of livestock to prevent contaminants from entering the food chain. Therefore, there is a need to develop strategies to depurate livestock moderately contaminated with POPs to reduce economic and social damage. This study aimed to test undernutrition (37% of energy requirements) combined with mineral oil (10% in total dry matter intake) in nine non-lactating ewes contaminated with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) 126 and 153 as a strategy to enhance the depuration of POPs through faecal excretion. To better understand the underlying mechanisms of the depuration process, lipophilic POPs and lipid fluxes were co-monitored in various body and excretion compartments. Body compartments (adipose tissues, muscle, liver and blood) and the total empty body were analyzed for lipids and POPs concentrations and burdens at slaughter, as well as excretion compartments (faeces and wool) collected during the depuration period. Decreases in empty body total and lipid weights were 6-fold higher in underfed and supplemented ewes compared to control ewes. In addition, over the depuration period undernutrition and supplementation treatment increased faecal TCDD, PCBs 126 and 153 excretions by 1.4- to 2.1-fold but tended to decrease wool PCB 153 excretion by 1.4-fold. This induced 2- to 3-fold higher decreases in the empty body POPs burdens for underfed and supplemented ewes. Nonetheless, when expressed relative to the calculated initial empty body burdens, burdens at slaughter decreased only slightly from 97%, 103% and 98% for control ewes to 92%, 97% and 94% for underfed and supplemented ones, for TCDD, PCBs 126 and 153, respectively. Fine descriptions at once of POPs kinetic (companion paper 1) and mass balance (companion paper 2), and of body lipid dynamics were very useful in improving our understanding of the fate of POPs in the ruminants.

This paper focuses on determining the structural similarity of two molecules, i.e., the similarity of the interconnection of all the elementary cycles in the corresponding molecular graphs. In this paper, we propose and analyze an algorithmic approach based on the resolution of the Maximum Common Edge Subgraph (MCES) problem with graphs representing the interaction of cycles molecules. Using the ChEBI database, we compare the effectiveness of this approach in terms of structural similarity and computation time with two calculations of similarity of molecular graphs, one based on the MCES, the other on the use of different fingerprints (Daylight, ECFP4, ECFP6, FCFP4, FCFP6) to measure Tanimoto coefficient. We also analyze the obtained structural similarity results for a selected subset of molecules.

International audience; This study developed, validated, and evaluated a framework of factors influencing dietary behaviours in urban African food environments, to inform research prioritisation and intervention development in Africa. A multi-component methodology, drawing on concept mapping, was employed to construct a framework of factors influencing dietary behaviours in urban Africa. The framework adapted a widely used socio-ecological model (developed in a high-income country context) and was developed using a mixed-methods research approach that comprised: i. Evidence synthesis consisting of a systematic review of 39 papers covering 14 African countries; ii. Qualitative interview data collected for adolescents and adults (n = 144) using photovoice in urban Ghana and Kenya; and iii. Consultation with interdisciplinary African experts (n = 71) from 27 countries, who contributed to at least one step of the framework (creation, validation/evaluation, finalisation). The final framework included 103 factors influencing dietary behaviours. Experts identified the factors influencing dietary behaviours across all the four levels of the food environment i.e. the individual, social, physical and macro levels. Nearly half (n = 48) were individual-level factors and just under a quarter (n = 26) were at the macro environmental level. Fewer factors associated with social (n = 15) and physical (14) environments were identified. At the macro level, the factors ranked as most important were food prices, cultural beliefs and seasonality. Factors ranked as important at the social level were household composition, family food habits and dietary practices. The type of food available in the neighbourhood and convenience were seen as important at the physical level, while individual food habits, food preferences and socioeconomic status were ranked highly at the individual level. About half of the factors (n = 54) overlap with those reported in an existing socio-ecological food environment framework developed in a high-income country context. A further 49 factors were identified that were not reported in the selected high-income country framework, underlining the importance of contextualisation. Our conceptual framework offers a useful tool for research to understand dietary transitions in urban African adolescents and adults, as well as identification of factors to intervene when promoting healthy nutritious diets to prevent multiple forms of malnutrition.

Smallholder farmer and tribal communities are often characterised as marginalised and highly vulnerable to emerging zoonotic diseases due to their relatively poor access to healthcare, worse-off health outcomes, proximity to sources of disease risks, and their social and livelihood organisation. Yet, access to relevant and timely disease information that could strengthen their adaptive capacity remain challenging and poorly characterised in the empirical literature. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the role of disease information in shaping the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmer and tribal groups to Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD), a tick-borne viral haemorrhagic fever. We carried out household surveys (n = 229) and in-depth interviews (n = 25) in two affected districts–Shimoga and Wayanad–in the Western Ghats region. Our findings suggest that, despite the generally limited awareness about KFD, access to disease information improved households’ propensity to implement adaptation strategies relative to households that had no access to it. Of the variety of adaptation strategies implemented, vaccination, avoiding forest visits, wearing of protective clothing and footwear, application of dimethyl phthalate (DMP) oil and income diversification were identified by respondents as important adaptive measures during the outbreak seasons. Even so, we identified significant differences between individuals in exposure to disease information and its contribution to substantive adaptive action. Households reported several barriers to implement adaptation strategies including, lack of disease information, low efficacy of existing vaccine, distrust, religio-cultural sentiments, and livelihood concerns. We also found that informal information sharing presented a promising avenue from a health extension perspective albeit with trade-offs with potential distortion of the messages through misinformation and/or reporting bias. Altogether, our findings stress the importance of contextualising disease information and implementing interventions in a participatory way that sufficiently addresses the social determinants of health in order to bolster households’ adaptive capacity to KFD and other neglected endemic zoonoses., Author summary There is widespread consensus that smallholder farmer and tribal communities are highly vulnerable to zoonotic diseases (illness passed between animals and people). This is largely due to their relatively poor access to healthcare and closeness to sources of disease risks. Although access to relevant and timely disease information could enhance their adaptive capacity, remain difficult and poorly understood. Drawing on survey data (n = 229) and in-depth interviews (n = 25) in two affected districts (Shimoga and Wayanad); we explored the role of disease information in shaping adaptation to Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD), a tick-borne viral haemorrhagic fever. We found that despite the limited awareness about KFD, access to disease information improved households’ likelihood to implement adaptation strategies as compared to households that had no access to it. Households identified several barriers to implementation of adaptation strategies including, lack of disease information, low efficacy of existing vaccine, distrust, religio-cultural sentiments, and livelihood concerns. Our findings highlight the relevance of contextualising disease information and implementing interventions in a participatory manner in order to strengthen households’ adaptive capacity to KFD and other neglected endemic zoonoses.

Based on a meta-analysis, this paper highlights the strength and relevance of several social incentive factors concerning pro-environmental behaviors, including social influence, network factors (like network size, network connection and leadership), trust in others, and trust in institutions. Firstly, our results suggest that social influence is necessary for the emergence of pro-environmental behaviors. More specifically, an internal social influence (i.e., motivating people to change their perceptions and attitudes) is essential to promote pro-environmental behaviors. Secondly, network connection encourages pro-environmental behaviors, meaning that the effectiveness of a conservation policy can be improved if connections among individuals are increased. Finally, trust in institutions can dictate individual behaviors to shape policy design and generate desired policy outcomes.

The population genetic structure of crop pest populations gives information about their spatial ecology, which helps in designing management strategies. In this paper, we investigated the genetic structure of the Mediterranean Corn Borer (MCB), Sesamia nonagrioides Lefèbvre (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), one of the most important maize pests in the Mediterranean countries, using microsatellite markers for the first time in this species. Insects were collected in twenty-five locations in southwest and southeast France from cultivated and wild host plants (Zea mays, Sorghum halepense and Typha domingensis). Contrary to what has been reported so far in France, we found that MCB populations could be locally abundant on wild poales plants. Analysis was carried out at 11 polymorphic microsatellite markers. Molecular variance was significantly determined by geography, then by host plant, with 17% and 4%, respectively, when considered as a major effect, and with 14% and 1%, respectively, when considered as a marginal effect in permutational analysis. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) and GENELAND Bayesian clustering suggested that populations infecting wild plants (T. domingensis and S. halepense) were more structured locally than those affecting cultivated maize. In S. halepense, significant Isolation By Distance (IBD) indicated that this factor could explain genetic differentiation of the moth populations. In T. domingensis, local population differentiation was strong but did not depend on distance. The implication of this absence of population structure in maize and the heterogeneity of population genetics patterns in wild plants are discussed in the context of the population dynamics hypothesis and population management strategies.

Using a common experimental framework, this paper addresses both the question of the short-term and the long-lasting effects of temporary monetary and non-monetary incentive mechanisms on increasing individual contributions to the public good. The results show that both punishments and rewards significantly increase contributions compared to the baseline, but that monetary sanctions lead to the highest contributions, whereas non-monetary sanctions lead to the lowest contributions. The four types of incentives display long-lasting effects, i.e., contributions do not go back to baseline levels directly after the withdrawal of the incentives. However, rewards appear to have much stronger persistent effects than sanctions, revealing some sort of delayed reciprocity.

International audience; Plant cell walls development is an integrated process during which several components are deposited successively. In the cell walls in grass, the accessibility of structural polysaccharides is limited by the cell walls structure and composition mainly as a result of phenolic compounds. Here, we studied the patterns of cell walls establishment in the internode supporting the ear in three distinct maize genotypes. The developmental patterns observed in the internode cell walls in terms of its composition are reported with an emphasis on lignification, p-coumaroylation and feruloylation. We combined biochemical and histological approaches and revealed that internode cell walls development in maize before flowering is characterized by the rapid deposition of secondary cell walls components and robust lignification in both the pith and the rind. After flowering and until silage maturity, the slow deposition of secondary walls components occurs in the cortical region, and the deposited lignins are rich in beta-O-4 bonds and are highly p-coumaroylated. We conclude the paper by proposing a revised spatiotemporal model based on that proposed by Terashima et al. (1993) for cell walls development in grass.

Biological systems can share and collectively process information to yield emergent effects, despite inherent noise in communication. While man-made systems often employ intricate structural solutions to overcome noise, the structure of many biological systems is more amorphous. It is not well understood how communication noise may affect the computational repertoire of such groups. To approach this question we consider the basic collective task of rumor spreading, in which information from few knowledgeable sources must reliably flow into the rest of the population. We study the effect of communication noise on the ability of groups that lack stable structures to efficiently solve this task. We present an impossibility result which strongly restricts reliable rumor spreading in such groups. Namely, we prove that, in the presence of even moderate levels of noise that affect all facets of the communication, no scheme can significantly outperform the trivial one in which agents have to wait until directly interacting with the sources—a process which requires linear time in the population size. Our results imply that in order to achieve efficient rumor spread a system must exhibit either some degree of structural stability or, alternatively, some facet of the communication which is immune to noise. We then corroborate this claim by providing new analyses of experimental data regarding recruitment in Cataglyphis niger desert ants. Finally, in light of our theoretical results, we discuss strategies to overcome noise in other biological systems., Author summary Biological systems must function despite inherent noise in their communication. Systems that enjoy structural stability, such as biological neural networks, could potentially overcome noise using simple redundancy-based procedures. However, when individuals have little control over who they interact with, it is unclear what conditions would prevent runaway error accumulation. This paper takes a general stance to investigate this problem, concentrating on the basic information-dissemination task of rumor spreading. Drawing on a theoretical model, we prove that fast rumor spreading can only be achieved if some part of the communication setting is either stable or reliable. We then provide empirical support for this claim by conducting new analyses of data from experiments on recruitment in desert ants.

International audience; Local and indigenous knowledge is being transformed globally, particularly being eroded when pertaining to ecology. In many parts of the world, rural and indigenous communities are facing tremendous cultural, economic and environmental changes, which contribute to weaken their local knowledge base. In the face of profound and ongoing environmental changes, both cultural and biological diversity are likely to be severely impacted as well as local resilience capacities from this loss. In this global literature review, we analyse the drivers of various types of local and indigenous ecological knowledge transformation and assess the directionality of the reported change. Results of this analysis show a global impoverishment of local and indigenous knowledge with 77% of papers reporting the loss of knowledge driven by globalization, modernization, and market integration. The recording of this loss, however, is not symmetrical, with losses being recorded more strongly in medicinal and ethnobotanical knowledge. Persistence of knowledge (15% of the studies) occurred in studies where traditional practices were being maintained consiously and where hybrid knowledge was being produced as a resut of certain types of incentives created by economic development. This review provides some insights into local and indigenous ecological knowledge change, its causes and implications, and recommends venues for the development of replicable and comparative research. The larger implication of these results is that because of the interconnection between cultural and biological diversity, the loss of local and indigenous knowledge is likely to critically threaten effective conservation of biodiversity , particularly in community-based conservation local efforts.

Spatial indicators are used to quantify the state of species and ecosystem status, that is the impacts of climate and anthropogenic changes, as well as to comprehend species ecology. These metrics are thus, determinant to the stakeholder's decisions on the conservation measures to be implemented. A detailed review of the literature (55 papers) showed that 18 spatial indicators were commonly used in marine ecology. Those indicators were than characterized and studied in detail, based on its application to empirical data (a time series of 35 marine species spatial distributions, sampled either with a random stratified survey or a regular transects surveys). The results suggest that the indicators can be grouped into three classes, that summarize the way the individuals occupy space: occupancy (the area occupied by a species), aggregation (spreading or concentration of species biomass) and quantity dependent (indicators correlated with biomass), whether these are spatially explicit (include the geographic coordinates, e.g. center of gravity) or not. Indicator's temporal variability was lower than between species variability and no clear effect was observed in relation to sampling design. Species were then classified accordingly to their indicators. One indicator was selected from each of the three categories of indicators, to represent the main axes of species spatial behavior and to interpret them in terms of occupancy-aggregation-quantity relationships. All species considered were then classified according to their relationships among those three axes, into species that under increasing abundancy, primarily increase occupancy or aggregation or both. We suggest to use these relationships along the three-axes as surveillance diagrams to follow the yearly evolution of species distributional patterns in the future. MSFD from France info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

International audience; The study of the lithic assemblages of two French sites, the Bau de l’Aubesier and Payre, contributes new knowledge of the earliest Neanderthal techno-cultural variability. In this paper we present the results of a detailed technological analysis of Early Middle Palaeolithic lithic assemblages of MIS 8 and 7 age from the two sites, which are located on opposite sides of the Rhône Valley in the south-east of France. The MIS 9–7 period is considered in Europe to be a time of new behaviours, especially concerning lithic strategies. The shift from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Early Middle Palaeolithic is “classically” defined by an increase in the number of core technologies, including standardized ones, which are stabilized in the full Middle Palaeolithic (MIS 5–3), associated with the decline of the “Acheulean” biface. Applying a common technological approach to the analysis of the two assemblages highlights their technological variability with respect to reduction systems and end products. Differences between Payre and the Bau de l’Aubesier concerning raw material procurement and faunal exploitation only partially explain this multifaceted technological variability, which in our opinion also reflects the existence of distinct technological strategies within the same restricted geographic area, which are related to distinct traditions, site uses, and/or as yet unknown parameters.

International audience; Government based Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) have been criticized for not maximizing environmental effectiveness through appropriate targeting, while instead prioritizing social side-objectives. In Mexico, existing literature on how the Payments for Ecosystem Services-Hydrological program (PSA-H) has targeted deforestation and forest degradation shows that both the process of identifying the eligible areas and the choice of the selection criteria for enrolling forest parcels have been under the influence of competing agendas. In the present paper we study the influence of the PSA-H multi-level governance on the environmental effectiveness of the program-the degree to which forest at high risk of deforestation is enrolled-building from a "policyscape" framework. In particular, we combine governance analysis with two distinct applications of the policyscape framework: First, at national level we assess the functional overlap between the PSA-H and other environmental and rural programs with regard to the risk of deforestation. Second, at regional level in the states of Chiapas and Yucatan, we describe the changing policy agenda and the role of technical intermediaries in defining the temporal spatialization of the PSA-H eligible and enrolled areas with regard to key socioeconomic criteria. We find that, although at national level the PSA-H program has been described as coping with both social and environmental indicators thanks to successful adaptive management, our analysis show that PSA-H is mainly found in communities where deforestation risk is low and in combination with other environmental programs (protected areas and forest management programs). Such inertia is reinforced at regional level as a result of the eligible areas' characteristics and the behaviour of technical intermediaries, which seek to minimise transaction costs and sources of uncertainty. Our project-specific analysis shows the importance of integrating the gover-nance of a program in the policyscape framework as a way to better systematize complex interactions at different spatial and institutional scales between policies and landscape characteristics.

Whole Genome Shotgun (WGS) metagenomics is increasingly used to study the structure and functions of complex microbial ecosystems, both from the taxonomic and functional point of view. Gene inventories of otherwise uncultured microbial communities make the direct functional profiling of microbial communities possible. The concept of community aggregated trait has been adapted from environmental and plant functional ecology to the framework of microbial ecology. Community aggregated traits are quantified from WGS data by computing the abundance of relevant marker genes. They can be used to study key processes at the ecosystem level and correlate environmental factors and ecosystem functions. In this paper we propose a novel model based approach to infer combinations of aggregated traits characterizing specific ecosystemic metabolic processes. We formulate a model of these Combined Aggregated Functional Traits (CAFTs) accounting for a hierarchical structure of genes, which are associated on microbial genomes, further linked at the ecosystem level by complex co-occurrences or interactions. The model is completed with constraints specifically designed to exploit available genomic information, in order to favor biologically relevant CAFTs. The CAFTs structure, as well as their intensity in the ecosystem, is obtained by solving a constrained Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) problem. We developed a multicriteria selection procedure for the number of CAFTs. We illustrated our method on the modelling of ecosystemic functional traits of fiber degradation by the human gut microbiota. We used 1408 samples of gene abundances from several high-throughput sequencing projects and found that four CAFTs only were needed to represent the fiber degradation potential. This data reduction highlighted biologically consistent functional patterns while providing a high quality preservation of the original data. Our method is generic and can be applied to other metabolic processes in the gut or in other ecosystems., Author Summary Microbial communities are highly complex ecosystems, harboring a high taxonomic diversity, rapidly varying in time. Focusing on the functional traits of microorganisms instead of species offers an interesting and complementary insight since quite often, owing to environmental selection pressure, traits are less variable in time and shared by many species. By providing gene inventories of otherwise uncultured microbial communities, Whole Genome Shotgun (WGS) metagenomics made the functional profiling of microbial communities possible, since community aggregated traits can be quantified by the abundance of relevant marker genes. Considering a global metabolic process in an ecosystem, we propose a method that exploits gene abundance data to determine combinations of functional traits characterizing this process. When applied to fiber degradation in the human gut microbiota, the method shows that only four complex functional traits are needed to characterize this process. The approach is generic and could be applied to other processes or ecosystems. It allows summarizing complex datasets by a limited number of biologically interpretable functional patterns.

International audience; Tropical climate is rapidly changing, but the effects of these changes on the geosphere are unknown, despite a likelihood of climatically-induced changes on weathering and erosion. The lack of long, continuous paleo-records prevents an examination of terrestrial responses to climate change with sufficient detail to answer questions about how systems behaved in the past and may alter in the future. We use high-resolution records of pollen, clay mineralogy, and particle size from a drill core from Lake Malawi, southeast Africa, to examine atmosphere-biosphere-geosphere interactions during the last deglaciation (,18–9 ka), a period of dramatic temperature and hydrologic changes. The results demonstrate that climatic controls on Lake Malawi vegetation are critically important to weathering processes and erosion patterns during the deglaciation. At 18 ka, afromontane forests dominated but were progressively replaced by tropical seasonal forest, as summer rainfall increased. Despite indication of decreased rainfall, drought-intolerant forest persisted through the Younger Dryas (YD) resulting from a shorter dry season. Following the YD, an intensified summer monsoon and increased rainfall seasonality were coeval with forest decline and expansion of drought-tolerant miombo woodland. Clay minerals closely track the vegetation record, with high ratios of kaolinite to smectite (K/S) indicating heavy leaching when forest predominates, despite variable rainfall. In the early Holocene, when rainfall and temperature increased (effective moisture remained low), open woodlands expansion resulted in decreased K/S, suggesting a reduction in chemical weathering intensity. Terrigenous sediment mass accumulation rates also increased, suggesting critical linkages among open vegetation and erosion during intervals of enhanced summer rainfall. This study shows a strong, direct influence of vegetation composition on weathering intensity in the tropics. As climate change will likely impact this interplay between the biosphere and geosphere, tropical landscape change could lead to deleterious effects on soil and water quality in regions with little infrastructure for mitigation. This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Data Availability: The authors confirm that all data underlying the findings are fully available without restriction. All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: Lake Malawi Drilling Project-Earth System History Program (NSF-EAR-0602404) funded field operations, logistics, and some laboratory analysis. NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2009078688) provided student salary and tuition and some travel support for laboratory analysis. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

International audience; Soil invertebrates are known to be much involved in soil behaviour and therefore in the provision of ecosystem services. Functional trait-based approaches are methodologies which can be used to understand soil invertebrates' responses to their environment. They (i) improve the predictions and (ii) are less dependent on space and time. The way traits have been used recently has led to misunderstandings in the integration and interpretation of data. Trait semantics are especially concerned. The aim of this paper is to propose a thesaurus for soil invertebrate trait-based approaches. T-SITA, an Internet platform, is the first initiative to deal with the semantics of traits and ecological preferences for soil invertebrates. It reflects the agreement of a scientific expert community to fix semantic properties (e.g. definition) of approximately 100 traits and ecological preferences. In addition, T-SITA has been successfully linked with a fully operational database of soil invertebrate traits. Such a link enhances data integration and improves the scientific integrity of data.