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Smooth brome (Bromus inermis L.) is a species of perennial grass with growing economic importance. Initially, this species had attracted interest as a source of animal feed. Over the years, the interest in smooth brome increased significantly due to the growing knowledge about its advantages. The aim of this study was to explore the contemporary significance of smooth brome. This plant is characterized by a high tolerance to many negative environmental factors, such as periodic droughts, low temperatures and salinity, which contributes to its constant presence in the landscape of many countries. The moderate soil requirements of smooth brome, combined with the effective use of soil resources and rational nutrient utilization, contribute to high biomass yields that can reach 13 t/ha DM. The usefulness of this grass species in various management systems has been recognized in numerous research studies. Smooth brome can generate benefits in many branches of the economy. This efficient energy plant is used in paper production, and it is also recommended for the protection of fallow land or the reclamation of degraded land. Smooth brome prevents erosion, enhances biodiversity, and provides shelter for many animal species. This species fits well into the current assumptions of agricultural policy and increasingly demanding environmental standards. According to the latest guidelines, modern agriculture should pursue economic and environmental goals simultaneously. In this context, smooth brome constitutes a valuable link in sustainable development. Due to its numerous advantages, smooth brome not only provides high-quality feed and biomass but also effectively sequesters CO2, improves soil fertility and enhances biodiversity, which makes it an important element of agriculture and environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will argue six reasons why Kant is an anthropocentric, but not an anthropo-supremacist. It will lay out Kant's case against animal egalitarianism, and how Kant's moral theory nevertheless provides sufficient obligations not to be cruel to other animal species and to care about their welfare, at least in the case of a domesticated animal, the dairy cow. A dairy farmer who is also motivated by Kantian virtue will have enough moral incentive to care about their dairy cows even though Kant's duties to other animal species are indirect and not direct. The paper will then conclude by arguing that current Kantian attempts to rescue Kant from the reproach of anthropocentricism either result in some form of anthropo-supremacy or in an attempt to bring other ethical theories like Utilitarianism and Aristotle into the account to justify animal egalitarianism. These philosophical attempts to support animal egalitarianism do not succeed in overcoming anthropocentrism or anthropo-supremacy, but rather may be contributing to misanthropy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zootoxins are produced by venomous and poisonous species and are an important cause of poisoning in companion animals and livestock in Europe. Little information about the incidence of zootoxin poisoning is available in Europe, with only a few case reports and review papers being published. This review presents the most important zootoxins produced by European venomous and poisonous animal species responsible for poisoning episodes in companion animals and livestock. The main zootoxin-producing animal species, components of the toxins/venoms and their clinical effects are presented. The most common zootoxicoses involve terrestrial zootoxins excreted by the common toad, the fire salamander, the pine processionary caterpillar, and vipers. The lack of a centralized reporting/poison control system in Europe makes the evaluation of the epidemiology of zootoxin-induced poisonings extremely difficult. Even if there are many anecdotal reports in the veterinary community about the exposure of domestic animals to terrestrial and marine zootoxins, the number of published papers regarding these toxicoses is low. Climate change and its consequences regarding species distribution and human-mediated transportation are responsible for the emerging nature of some intoxications in which zootoxins are involved. Although new venomous or poisonous animal species have emerged in regions where they were previously unreported, zootoxins produced by native species remain the main concern in Europe. The diversity of poisonous and venomous animal species and the emerging nature of certain poisonings warrant the continuous update to such knowledge by veterinary professionals and animal owners. This review offers an overview about zootoxin-related poisonings in domestic animals in Europe and also provides important information from a health perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, due to the large Romanian community present in Italy, the retail of foods coming from Eastern Europe has increased. The most common type of violation detected in these foods consists of incorrect labeling and species-replacement frauds. In this paper, the compliance of labels of 43 ethnic processed food coming from Eastern Europe and commercialized in Italy was evaluated by means of PCR and Sanger sequencing. Our data revealed 33% of non-compliant labels in samples containing swine, ruminants, and avian ingredients. These results demonstrate that PCR can be easily used for the identification of species in highly processed products, proving to be a rapid, effective, and economic method. On the other hand, samples reporting fish as ingredients highlighted the ineffectiveness of the applied sequencing protocol, due to the low informative property of targeted fragments or to the lack of consensus sequences in the case of uncommon species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The invasion of non-native species (NNS) is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity loss and represents a major problem in the Mediterranean Sea. Although many recent EU policies and directives address this problem and numerous scientific papers have been published, the available data remains scattered and incomplete. In 2021, the World Register of Introduced Marine Species (WRiMS), a newly established database, was launched but has not yet undergone systematic analysis. This study performed a thorough examination of the NNS documented in the WRiMS database within the Mediterranean Sea (International Hydrographic Organization Sea Area). Our findings revealed that the majority of species in the WRiMS database for the Mediterranean are classified as "unspecified" or "uncertain", with only 79 species labeled as "invasive" and 13 as "of concern". The number of recorded animal species exceeds that of plants, and most species belong to the phyla Chordata and Mollusca. Callinectes sapidus and Fistularia commersonii were the most frequently recorded species in the WRiMS for the Mediterranean. Although there exists some data on the impact of NNS and the vectors of their introduction, the information remains incomplete and requires further scientific research. The synthesized and summarized data in the supplement can be valuable input for a range of management decisions and for guiding further scientific research concerning NNS invasions in the Mediterranean Sea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioacoustic event detection is a demanding endeavor involving recognizing and classifying the sounds animals make in their natural habitats. Traditional supervised learning requires a large amount of labeled data, which are hard to come by in bioacoustics. This paper presents a few-shot learning (FSL) method incorporating transductive inference and data augmentation to address the issues of too few labeled events and small volumes of recordings. Here, transductive inference iteratively alters class prototypes and feature extractors to seize essential patterns, whereas data augmentation applies SpecAugment on Mel spectrogram features to augment training data. The proposed approach is evaluated by using the Detecting and Classifying Acoustic Scenes and Events (DCASE) 2022 and 2021 datasets. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that all components of the proposed method achieve significant F-score improvements of 27% and 10%, for the DCASE-2022 and DCASE-2021 datasets, respectively, compared to recent advanced approaches. Moreover, our method is helpful in FSL tasks because it effectively adapts to sounds from various animal species, recordings, and durations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The yak (Poephagus grunniens) has evolved unique adaptations to survive the harsh environment of the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, while their gut microorganisms play a crucial role in maintaining the health of the animal. Gut microbes spread through the animal population not only by horizontal transmission but also vertically, which enhances microbial stability and inheritance between generations of the population. Homogenization of gut microbes in different animal species occurs in the same habitat, promoting interspecies coexistence. Using the yak as a model animal, this paper discusses the adaptive strategies under extreme environments, and how the gut microbes of the yak circulate throughout the Tibetan Plateau system, which not only affects other plateau animals such as plateau pikas, but can also have a profound impact on the health of people. By examining the relationships between yaks and their gut microbiota, this review offers new insights into the adaptation of yaks and their ecological niche on the Qinghai–Tibetan plateau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, present a cost-effective solution for the swift collection of data from vast and remote areas that are otherwise difficult to access. The Mediterranean Basin, known for being a hotspot for plant biodiversity, hosts several habitats and taxa of significant naturalistic value. However, many of these areas are often inaccessible to botanists, making exploration and research challenging. The aim of this paper is to involve the utilization of drone surveys and open-source software for botanical research. Our primary goal is to show the effectiveness of these tools in the field and demonstrate their practical application in Natura 2000 sites. The protected area chosen for this research is Rocca di Novara, situated in northeastern Sicily. Thanks to our drone investigations, we were able to capture images of a mountainside that is inaccessible to humans. This allowed us to observe the habitat of some species in detail. One of the most fascinating discoveries was the reappearance of Saxifraga callosa subsp. australis, which had not been confirmed in this area for over 140 years. Using drones for botanical research can boost field research, making monitoring easier and more cost-effective over time, especially in Natura 2000 sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: This paper explores why it is ethical to rehome all healthy laboratory animals after the experiments have finished. We describe our own rehoming experience from the joint Ani-mal Welfare Body of Utrecht University and the University Medical Centre Utrecht, the Nether-lands. During a pilot period, over 350 animals were successfully rehomed. Now, rehoming in our lab is a standard policy and common practice. We discuss several challenges and our responses to those through the continuous evaluation of this adoption program. This paper explores the ethical imperative of rehoming all healthy animals of sentient species after experiments have finished or when they have become otherwise redundant. We take into account disparate perspectives in animal ethics and see how they point in the same direction. We illustrate our case with our own rehoming experience from the joint Animal Welfare Body of Utrecht University and the University Medical Centre Utrecht, the Netherlands. The primary pilot proved successful, after which the principle of rehoming became standing policy and common practice. We discuss several challenges and our responses to those through continuous evaluation of the adoption program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The range of interactions between Cladosporium, a ubiquitous fungal genus, and insects, a class including about 60% of the animal species, is extremely diverse. The broad case history of antagonism and mutualism connecting Cladosporium and insects is reviewed in this paper based on the examination of the available literature. Certain strains establish direct interactions with pests or beneficial insects or indirectly influence them through their endophytic development in plants. Entomopathogenicity is often connected to the production of toxic secondary metabolites, although there is a case where these compounds have been reported to favor pollinator attraction, suggesting an important role in angiosperm reproduction. Other relationships include mycophagy, which, on the other hand, may reflect an ecological advantage for these extremely adaptable fungi using insects as carriers for spreading in the environment. Several Cladosporium species colonize insect structures, such as galleries of ambrosia beetles, leaf rolls of attelabid weevils and galls formed by cecidomyid midges, playing a still uncertain symbiotic role. Finally, the occurrence of Cladosporium in the gut of several insect species has intriguing implications for pest management, also considering that some strains have proven to be able to degrade insecticides. These interactions especially deserve further investigation to understand the impact of these fungi on pest control measures and strategies to preserve beneficial insects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The attention of scientists and citizens is increasingly focused on the issue of animals as sentient beings. This inherent quality of animals, although recognized by many countries at a regulatory level, if not well defined in scientific terms can lead to misunderstandings and the wrong consequences. It is important to note that animal sentience, understood as the ability to experience emotions, is limited in extent and restricted to certain animal species. While this understanding may lead some to believe in universal animal rights, this is not logical as the recognition of animal life free from fear, restriction, and suffering is actually a human right, not an animal one. Taking a cue from J.W. Yates' recent work on animal sentience published in this journal, which explores the field and categorizes it as a harmony with nature and a recognition of its values, inferring that the inclusion of animals in the sphere of objective rights is the obligatory step for a real sustainability in all human activities, this opinion paper seeks to challenge some of the claims made in the article and present an alternative perspective on sentience and animal rights. Preliminarily, I propose a semantic word-washing and the use of more precise terms instead of not well-defined ones such as "harmony" in relation to nature and "sentience" in relation to animals, and I affirm that there can be only one point of view, however rich in dialectics, which is the human one for looking at the problems of animal ethics. Below, I present the thesis that concludes that it is not possible to attribute rights to animals, but it is our right and duty to protect their well-being, which requires states to pass laws for their defence. I conclude that while it is acceptable to raise animals for priority human rights (such as food and health), it is also an obligation to properly care for and protect them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several ungulate species are showing increasing population patterns within their geographical distribution ranges, leading to constant interactions with other animal species. Varying densities and activities of different ungulates may result in diverse impacts on other coexisting species groups, including large numbers of threatened species, such as reptiles. In this study, we performed an analysis of the available literature to investigate the impacts of ungulates on reptiles. We aimed to reveal the diversity of: (1) the geographical and environmental distribution of related investigations; (2) the ungulate and reptile species involved; and (3) the characteristics of interactions (direct or indirect, positive or negative) from 69 publications. Our results show that the most papers were reported from the Americas (42%) and Australia (28%). The proportions of studies were balanced for wild ungulates (53%) and livestock (47%). Wild boar (Sus scrofa) was found to be the most problematic species on reptiles whereas reptiles which suffered the harshest impacts were Squamates (i.e., lizards, and snakes). Ungulate activities (e.g., digging by wild boar) may directly harm reptiles (consuming or killing them) or indirectly affect them by modifying their habitats or destroying their hideouts. Some preferential effects were also noted (e.g., by moderate livestock grazing or when wild ungulates are prey for large reptiles). Published livestock impacts were mainly indirect and mostly negatively linked to overgrazing. We conclude that it is important to manage and monitor the densities of ungulates to minimize their negative impacts on reptile species, especially in case of wild boar and grazing livestock, but also to maintain their moderate beneficial effects (e.g., as prey basis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tangsas are rich in their traditional knowledge-based medicinal practices. They employ various traditional healing mechanisms like spiritual healing, herbal healing and zootherapeutic healing to deal with numerous health-related problems. This paper investigates the traditional knowledge of animal-based remedies among the Tangsa community of Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh, India. The paper deals with three important areas; first, it attempts to identify some of the animal species which are useful for medicinal purposes, secondly to understand how animal-based medicines are prepared and applied, and lastly to know about different diseases that can be treated traditionally with animal-based products. The present study is based on the empirical data collected during fieldwork conducted in seven villages located in different parts of Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh. It has been observed that use of animal-based remedies among the Tangsa community is gradually declining due to varied reasons like modern medical facilities, education, intervention of the govt., lack of resources and products, shortage of medicine experts, and so on. Thus, this study is important to document the use of animal-based remedies as part of a traditional knowledge system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The rate of human population growth continues to increase, with a growing adverse anthropogenic influence on the biosphere. This creates a completely new evolutionary challenge to animal species and new research tasks for bioconservation science. Biocollections are very helpful in bioconservation in this situation. We studied the professional opinions of bioconservation specialists on the future of creating/maintaining biocollections and biocollection networks in Russia. There is a significant degree of concordance among them about the necessity to unite biocollections in networks. This may provide several important opportunities: the ability to cross-check in research, the simplicity of access, redundancy in storing specimens, and effective data curation. We show the success and deliberate on the future potential of our scientific institution in developing and sustaining four large biocollections. These biocollections may become a basis for a national biodiversity centre. Biodiversity collections are important vehicles for protecting endangered wildlife in situations of adverse anthropogenic influence. In Russia, there are currently a number of institution- and museum-based biological collections, but there are no nation-wide centres of biodiversity collections. In this paper, we report on the results of our survey of 324 bioconservation, big-data, and ecology specialists from different regions of Russia in regard to the necessity to create several large national biodiversity centres of wildlife protection. The survey revealed specific goals that have to be fulfilled during the development of these centres for the protection and restoration of endangered wildlife species. The top three problems/tasks (topics) are the following: (1) the necessity to create large national centres for different types of specimens; (2) the full sequencing and creation of different "omic" (genomic, proteomic, transcriptomic, etc.) databases; (3) full digitisation of a biodiversity collection/centre. These goals may constitute a guideline for the future of biodiversity collections in Russia that would be targeted at protecting and restoring endangered species. With the due network service level, the translation of the website into English, and permission from the regulator (Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russian Federation), it can also become an international project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents additional notes on the carabid genus Nebria subgenus Falcinebria Ledoux and Roux, 2005 from Japan: a description of a new species Nebria suzukana sp. nov. from Mt. Gozaishodake; a new distribution and the southwesternmost collection record of Nebria furcata Sasakawa, 2020 from Mt. Uchimiyama; an additional record of Nebria kobushicola Sasakawa, 2023 from the Yatsugatake Mountains; and an additional record of an undetermined species from the Iide Mountains that was previously treated as Nebria taketoi Habu, 1962, with a note on its habitat. In addition, a key to the known species of Nebria (Falcinebria) from Honshu is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animal models are currently used in several fields of biomedical research as useful alternatives to human-based studies. However, the obtained results do not always effectively translate into clinical applications, due to interspecies anatomical and physiological differences. Detailed comparability studies are therefore required to verify whether the selected animal species could be a representative model for the disease or for cellular process under investigation. This has proven to be fundamental to obtaining reliable data from preclinical studies. Among the different species, swine is deemed an excellent animal model in many fields of biological research, and has been largely used in respiratory medicine, considering the high homology between human and swine airways. In the context of in vitro studies, the validation of porcine airway epithelial cells as an alternative to human epithelial cells is crucial. In this paper, porcine and human tracheal and bronchial epithelial cells are compared in terms of in vivo tissue architecture and in vitro cell behaviour under standard and airlifted conditions, analyzing the regenerative, proliferative and differentiative potentials of these cells. We report multiple analogies between the two species, validating the employment of porcine airway epithelial cells for most in vitro preclinical studies, although with some limitations due to species-related divergences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laboratory testing methods to confirm the identity of meat products and eliminate food fraud regularly rely on PCR amplification of extracted DNA, with most published assays detecting mitochondrial sequences, providing sensitive presence/absence results. By targeting single-copy nuclear targets instead, relative quantification measurements are achievable, providing additional information on the proportions of meat species detected. In this Methods paper, new assays for horse, donkey, duck, kangaroo, camel, water buffalo and crocodile have been developed to expand the range of species that can be quantified, and a previously published reference assay targeting the myostatin gene has been modified to include marsupials and reptiles. The accuracy of this ratio measurement approach was demonstrated using dPCR with mixtures of meat DNA down to 0.1%. However, the limit of detection (LOD) of this approach is not just determined by the assay targets, but by the samples themselves, with food or feed ingredients and processing impacting the DNA yield and integrity. In routine testing settings, the myostatin assay can provide multiple quality control roles, including monitoring the yield and purity of extracted DNA, identifying the presence of additional meats not detected by the suite of species-specific assays and potentially estimating a sample-specific LOD based on measured copy numbers of the myostatin target. In addition to the myostatin positive control assay, a synthetic DNA reference material (RM) has been designed, containing PCR targets for beef, pork, sheep, chicken, goat, kangaroo, horse, water buffalo and myostatin, to be used as a positive template control. The availability of standardised measurement methods and associated RMs significantly improves the reliability, comparability and transparency of laboratory testing, leading to greater confidence in results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: This article presents the current knowledge regarding the modulation and expression profile of hormonal, immunological, redox, and growth mediators involved in the reproductive morphophysiology of the domestic cat. The domestic cat (Felis catus) is considered an important model for the study of feline reproductive morphophysiology. However, although the morphological changes and clinical signs that occur during the estrous cycle and pregnancy are well known, little is known about the molecular mechanisms involved in the reproductive physiology of this animal species. Thus, this paper reviews the current knowledge about the modulation and expression profile of hormonal, immunological, redox, and growth mediators involved in the uterine, ovarian, and placental morphophysiology of domestic cats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A commentary published in Frontiers in Ecology & Evolution discusses a study on the generative power of language in birds, specifically the Japanese tit. The study suggests that these birds have evolved a cognitive capacity called "core-Merge," which allows them to combine two words into a single unit. The researchers conducted experiments that showed the birds respond differently to alert-recruitment call sequences compared to separate alert and recruitment calls, indicating that they recognize the sequence as a single unit. The commentary addresses criticisms of the study and argues that the results provide evidence for core-Merge. The text also discusses conflicting theories on the origins of language's productivity. [Extracted from the article]

Determination of the urinary protein-to-creatinine ratio (UPC) is an important tool in the quantification of proteinuria in animals. However, the result may be affected by the different methods of determining the urinary protein concentration. The aim of this study was to compare the turbidimetric method using benzethonium chloride and the colorimetric method using pyrogallol red in the measurement of the urinary protein concentration in dogs, cats, guinea pigs and horses. A total of 464, 192, 216 and 119 urine samples from dogs, cats, guinea pigs and horses were examined in the study, respectively. The group consisted of animals of both sexes and different ages, and, in the dogs and cats, it included both healthy animals and those with various health problems. In the group of horses and guinea pigs, only clinically healthy animals were included. A total of 347, 185, 103 and 100 samples from the dogs, cats, guinea pigs and horses were used in the statistical analysis; the other values were excluded as they were below the detection limit. According to the Passing-Bablok analysis, there was a significant constant and proportional difference in the horses. In the dogs, cats and guinea pigs, there was a significant constant difference, but no proportional difference. The Bland-Altman method showed significant bias between the two methods in the horses and cats, but not in the dogs and guinea pigs. In the dogs and cats, the agreement between the two methods was tested and expressed as Cohen’s kappa (κ). In the cats, it was almost perfect for the proteinuric samples (κ = 0.823 3) and significant for the non-proteinuric samples (κ = 0.804 9). In the dogs, the agreement was significant for the non-proteinuric samples (κ = 0.621 5) and only moderate for the proteinuric samples (κ = 0.527 5). The influence of the method used to determine the urinary protein concentration should be taken into account when evaluating the UPC. Repeated examinations in one patient should be performed with the same method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human joint action is inherently cooperative, manifested in the collaborative efforts of participants to minimize communicative trouble through interactive repair. Although interactive repair requires sophisticated cognitive abilities, it can be dissected into basic building blocks shared with non-human animal species. A review of the primate literature shows that interactionally contingent signal sequences are at least common among species of non-human great apes, suggesting a gradual evolution of repair. To pioneer a cross-species assessment of repair this paper aims at (i) identifying necessary precursors of human interactive repair; (ii) proposing a coding framework for its comparative study in humans and non-human species; and (iii) using this framework to analyse examples of interactions of humans (adults/children) and non-human great apes. We hope this paper will serve as a primer for cross-species comparisons of communicative breakdowns and how they are repaired. This article is part of the theme issue 'Revisiting the human 'interaction engine': comparative approaches to social action coordination'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Biodiversity monitoring is one of the primary means of ecological research. With the development of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in the field of instance segmentation, CNNs are also used for species recognition. Almost all species recognition models apply pixel-based instance segmentation to recognize animal species. However, pixel-based instance segmentation models require a large number of annotations and labels, which makes them time-consuming and unsuitable for small datasets. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a contour-based wild animal instance segmentation model that can reach a balance between accuracy and real-time performance. Camera traps are widely used in wildlife research, conservation, and management, and abundant images are acquired every day. Efficient real-time instance segmentation networks can help ecologists label and study wild animals. However, existing deep convolutional neural networks require a large number of annotations and labels, which makes them unsuitable for small datasets. In this paper, we propose a two-stage method for the instance segmentation of wildlife, including object detection and contour approximation. In the object detection stage, we use FSOD (few-shot object detection) to recognize animal species and detect the initial bounding boxes of animals. In the case of a small wildlife dataset, this method may improve the generalization ability of the wild animal species recognition and even identify new species that only have a small number of training samples. In the second stage, deep snake is used as the contour approximation model for the instance segmentation of wild mammals. The initial bounding boxes generated in the first stage are input to deep snake to approximate the contours of the animal bodies. The model fuses the advantages of detecting new species and real-time instance segmentation. The experimental results show that the proposed method is more suitable for wild animal instance segmentation, in comparison with pixel-wise segmentation methods. In particular, the proposed method shows a better performance when facing challenging images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ratiometric strategy are an invaluable method that helps to detect and quantify analytes. This approach relies on measuring changes in the ratio of two or more signals to improve the accuracy and sensitivity of the results. Ratiometric strategies are widely used in a variety of fields including biomedical, environmental monitoring and food safety. It is particularly popular when traditional singlesignal based detection methods are not feasible, especially when interfering substances severely affect the detection. In addition, ratiometric methods have the potential to improve the accuracy and reliability of analyte detection, leading to better results in a variety of complex environments. The article provides a comprehensive review of ratiometric strategy, focusing on ratiometric fluorescent nanoprobes for the visual detection of analytes. This paper also discusses the design of ratiometric two-photon fluorescent probes for biomedical imaging, the synthesis of ratiometric surface-enhanced Raman scattering nanoprobes for the imaging of intracellular analytes, the development of ratiometric molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensors for detection of electroactive species, and the use of isotopically-labeled internal standards in matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization for ratiometric analysis. The article not only discusses each technique in detail, including its principles, advantages, potential applications, and limitations, but also highlights recent advances in each method and possible future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few-shot learning (FSL) describes the challenge of learning a new task using a minimum amount of labeled data, and we have observed significant progress made in this area. In this paper, we explore the effectiveness of the FSL theory by considering a real-world problem where labels are hard to obtain. To assist a large study on chimpanzee hunting activities, we aim to classify various animal species that appear in our in-the-wild camera traps located in Senegal. Using the philosophy of FSL, we aim to train an FSL network to learn to separate animal species using large public datasets and implement the network on our data with its novel species/classes and unseen environments, needing only to label a few images per new species. Here, we first discuss constraints and challenges caused by having in-the-wild uncurated data, which are often not addressed in benchmark FSL datasets. Considering these new challenges, we create two experiments and corresponding evaluation metrics to determine a network's usefulness in a real-world implementation scenario. We then compare results from various FSL networks, and describe how factors may affect a network's potential real-world usefulness. We consider network design factors such as distance metrics or extra pre-training, and examine their roles in a real-world implementation setting. We also consider additional factors such as support set selection and ease of implementation, which are usually ignored when a benchmark dataset has been established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: According to European regulations, the severity of the suffering of animals during animal experiments should be assessed. Regulatory documents and guidelines provide recommendations on how to approach this severity assessment; however, they are often not specific enough, resulting in inconsistencies between different institutes performing the same procedures. To overcome this, two Belgian academic institutions with a focus on biomedical research, collaborated to develop and align the severity classification for all procedures performed. This was performed based on the available literature and guidelines, as well as the professional judgment of the designated veterinarians, animal welfare bodies and animal ethics committees. Throughout the manuscript, we motivate which criteria were used to classify procedures or groups of procedures within a specific category. Our collaborative classification includes many procedures and disease models in a variety of animal species for which a severity classification was not reported so far, or the terms that assign them to a different severity were too vague. We believe this extensive list of procedures and the approach described in this paper could be of great value to other research institutions. According to the EU Directive 2010/63, all animal procedures must be classified as non-recovery, mild, moderate or severe. Several examples are included in the Directive to help in severity classification. Since the implementation of the Directive, different publications and guidelines have been disseminated on the topic. However, due to the large variety of disease models and animal procedures carried out in many different animal species, guidance on the severity classification of specific procedures or models is often lacking or not specific enough. The latter is especially the case in disease models where the level of pain, suffering, distress and lasting harm depends on the duration of the study (for progressive disease models) or the dosage given (for infectious or chemically induced disease models). This, in turn, may lead to inconsistencies in severity classification between countries, within countries and even within institutions. To overcome this, two Belgian academic institutions with a focus on biomedical research collaborated to develop a severity classification for all the procedures performed. This work started with listing all in-house procedures and assigning them to 16 (sub)categories. First, we determined which parameters, such as clinical signs, dosage or duration, were crucial for severity classification within a specific (sub)category. Next, a severity classification was assigned to the different procedures, which was based on professional judgment by the designated veterinarians, members of the animal welfare body (AWB) and institutional animal ethics committee (AEC), integrating the available literature and guidelines. During the classification process, the use of vague terminology, such as 'minor impact', was avoided as much as possible. Instead, well-defined cut-offs between severity levels were used. Furthermore, we sought to define common denominators to group procedures and to be able to classify new procedures more easily. Although the primary aim is to address prospective severity, this can also be used to assess actual severity. In summary, we developed a severity classification for all procedures performed in two academic, biomedical institutions. These include many procedures and disease models in a variety of animal species for which a severity classification was not reported so far, or the terms that assign them to a different severity were too vague. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents horned animals of India, described by Aelian in his zoological treatise On the Characteristics of Animals (De natura animalium, XV 15; XVI 20). Probably he is repeating Megasthenes' description of the oriental animals existing in the Indian Peninsula. The present author carefully analyzes three species of animals, mentioned under their local (i.e. non-Greek) names: (1) μέσοι, (2) ΚαρΤάζωνος and (3) ύάριναι. It is suggested that Aelian's zoological nomenclature is of Middle Indo-Aryan origin and refers to three species of horned mammals, respectively: (1) the Ladakh urial or the wild oriental sheep (Ovis vignei Blyth, 1841); (2) the Indian rhinoceros or the greater one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis L., 1758); (3) the Deccan chinkara, known as the Indian gazelle and the ravine deer (Gazella bennettii Sykes, 1831). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Psicologia USP is the property of Instituto de Psicologia da Universidade de Sao Paulo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines Nathaniel Hawthorne's ecophilosophy in "Rappaccini's Daughter" by focusing on his various representations of the natural environment and the human relationship to it. It suggests that the story refl ects his belief that nature is divinely arranged and that humanity should protect rather than manipulate its systems. From his perspective, the disruption of natural systems would not only cause the extinction of many animal species but also endanger human life and existence on earth. The paper further suggests that Hawthorne promotes a view of nature as a living organism whose entities possess souls and spirits. Their capacity to have feelings and emotions makes them entitled to moral respect and consideration. In its study of the author's environmental values and ethics, the essay claims that Hawthorne advocates the idea that human beings do not occupy a privileged position in the universe and that they are not superior or more important than nonhumans. In contrast to the Biblical vision of humankind, he portrays humans as weak and fl awed creatures that cannot attain divine perfection. For these reasons, the paper asserts that "Rappaccini's Daughter" exhibits Hawthorne's deep ecological awareness and underlines his stature as a pioneer of American literary environmentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Nathaniel Hawthorne's ecophilosophy in "Rappaccini's Daughter" by focusing on his various representations of the natural environment and the human relationship to it. It suggests that the story reflects his belief that nature is divinely arranged and that humanity should protect rather than manipulate its systems. From his perspective, the disruption of natural systems would not only cause the extinction of many animal species but also endanger human life and existence on earth. The paper further suggests that Hawthorne promotes a view of nature as a living organism whose entities possess souls and spirits. Their capacity to have feelings and emotions makes them entitled to moral respect and consideration. In its study of the author's environmental values and ethics, the essay claims that Hawthorne advocates the idea that human beings do not occupy a privileged position in the universe and that they are not superior or more important than nonhumans. In contrast to the Biblical vision of humankind, he portrays humans as weak and fl awed creatures that cannot attain divine perfection. For these reasons, the paper asserts that "Rappaccini's Daughter" exhibits Hawthorne's deep ecological awareness and underlines his stature as a pioneer of American literary environmentalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in evolutionary theories (the Extended Synthesis) demonstrate that organisms systematically modify environments in ways that influence their own and other species' evolution. This paper utilises these theories to examine the economic consequences of human dispersal from Africa. Evidence shows that early humans' dispersal affected the adaptability of animal species to human environments and, through this, the extinction of large mammals during Homo sapiens ' out-of-Africa migration. Empirical analyses explore the variation in extinction rates as a source of exogenous pressure for cooperation and innovation among hunter-gatherers and examine the impact of extinction on long-run development. The results indicate that extinction affects economic performance by driving continental differences in biogeography, disease environments and institutions. Eurasia's location along the out-of-Africa migratory path provided human and animal populations with co-evolutionary foundations for domestication and agriculture, which gave Eurasians technological and institutional advantages in comparative development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a request from the European Commission, EFSA was asked to deliver a scientific opinion on the safety and efficacy of Patent Blue V as a sensory feed additive for non‐food‐producing animals. The additive is already authorised for use with non‐food‐producing animals. The applicant has not provided evidence that the additive currently on the market complies with the existing conditions of authorisation. The FEEDAP Panel cannot conclude whether the additive remains safe for the target species due to the non‐compliance with the specifications and the lack of adequate data on the potential aneugenicity of the additive. In the absence of data, the FEEDAP Panel cannot conclude on the potential of the additive to be a dermal and eye irritant nor a dermal and respiratory sensitiser. Since the potential genotoxicity of the additive was not ruled out, the exposure to the additive of the unprotected users should be minimised. The Panel retains that the previously made conclusion on the efficacy remains valid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biodiversity of our planet is under threat, with approximately one million species expected to become extinct within decades. The reason: negative human actions, which include hunting, overfishing, pollution, and the conversion of land for urbanisation and agricultural purposes. Despite significant investment from charities and governments for activities that benefit nature, global wildlife populations continue to decline. Local wildlife guardians have historically played a critical role in global conservation efforts and have shown their ability to achieve sustainability at various levels. In 2021, COP26 recognised their contributions and pledged USD 1.7 billion per year; however this is a fraction of the global biodiversity budget available (between USD 124 billion and USD 143 billion annually) given they protect 80% of the planets biodiversity. This paper proposes a radical new solution based on "Interspecies Money", where animals own their own money. Creating a digital twin for each species allows animals to dispense funds to their guardians for the services they provide. For example, a rhinoceros may release a payment to its guardian each time it is detected in a camera trap as long as it remains alive and well. To test the efficacy of this approach, 27 camera traps were deployed over a 400 km 2 area in Welgevonden Game Reserve in Limpopo Province in South Africa. The motion-triggered camera traps were operational for ten months and, using deep learning, we managed to capture images of 12 distinct animal species. For each species, a makeshift bank account was set up and credited with GBP 100. Each time an animal was captured in a camera and successfully classified, 1 penny (an arbitrary amount—mechanisms still need to be developed to determine the real value of species) was transferred from the animal account to its associated guardian. The trial demonstrated that it is possible to achieve high animal detection accuracy across the 12 species with a sensitivity of 96.38%, specificity of 99.62%, precision of 87.14%, F1 score of 90.33%, and an accuracy of 99.31%. The successful detections facilitated the transfer of GBP 185.20 between animals and their associated guardians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automatic classification of marine species based on images is a challenging task for which multiple solutions have been increasingly provided in the past two decades. Oceans are complex ecosystems, difficult to access, and often the images obtained are of low quality. In such cases, animal classification becomes tedious. Therefore, it is often necessary to apply enhancement or pre-processing techniques to the images, before applying classification algorithms. In this work, we propose an image enhancement and classification pipeline that allows automated processing of images from benthic moving platforms. Deep-sea (870 m depth) fauna was targeted in footage taken by the crawler "Wally" (an Internet Operated Vehicle), within the Ocean Network Canada (ONC) area of Barkley Canyon (Vancouver, BC; Canada). The image enhancement process consists mainly of a convolutional residual network, capable of generating enhanced images from a set of raw images. The images generated by the trained convolutional residual network obtained high values in metrics for underwater imagery assessment such as UIQM (~ 2.585) and UCIQE (2.406). The highest SSIM and PSNR values were also obtained when compared to the original dataset. The entire process has shown good classification results on an independent test data set, with an accuracy value of 66.44% and an Area Under the ROC Curve (AUROC) value of 82.91%, which were subsequently improved to 79.44% and 88.64% for accuracy and AUROC respectively. These results obtained with the enhanced images are quite promising and superior to those obtained with the non-enhanced datasets, paving the strategy for the on-board real-time processing of crawler imaging, and outperforming those published in previous papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Dogs are the most common pet animal species in the UK, with many households acquiring dogs every year. However, little is known about whether prospective owners undertake research prior to acquiring a dog and what factors may affect the likelihood of doing so. This paper reports findings from a mixed methods study into dog acquisition in the UK. We found that almost half of existing owners did not look for information or advice before getting their most recently acquired dog, and that those with previous dog ownership experience were less likely to do so than first-time owners. Younger prospective owners were more likely to have undertaken pre-acquisition research, as were those with formal education qualifications. Findings may be of interest to those who provide advice related to dog acquisition and dog ownership, in order to encourage more prospective owners towards effective pre-acquisition research. The factors influencing why and how people decide to acquire a dog are not well understood and little is known about the extent to which prospective owners undertake preparatory research. This study aimed to better understand what factors influence whether prospective dog owners in the UK conduct preparatory research. A 2019 online survey of current (n = 8050) and potential (n = 2884) dog owners collected quantitative and qualitative data. Additional qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with current (n = 166) and potential (n = 10) dog owners. Of the current owners surveyed, 54% stated that they had looked for advice or information prior to acquiring their dog. Of potential owners, 68% reported already having looked for information, while a further 14% were planning to undertake research prior to acquiring a dog. Those with previous dog ownership experience were less likely to undertake pre-acquisition research, as were those who had worked with dogs. Demographic factors were also associated with the likelihood of conducting pre-acquisition research, with younger prospective owners being more likely to have undertaken research, as well as those with formal education qualifications. Among current owners, pre-acquisition research was more likely among those who acquired their dog through a breeder; a specific breed or a mix of two breeds; or as a puppy. Qualitative data were consistent with and added additional understanding and context to these findings. Almost half of current owners did not conduct pre-acquisition research, highlighting the need for increased awareness of its importance and the development of targeted interventions to encourage this activity. Understanding the different factors that influence whether dog owners undertake research may be of interest to animal welfare and veterinary organisations, in order to inform interventions to better prepare people for dog acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Assessing the impact of scientific procedures on animals is not always easy, especially when considering the variety of species, ages and experimental conditions to which research animals are exposed. It is important to do so, as legislation demands that humane endpoints or intervention points be implemented by scientists when appropriate during an experiment. Herein, I describe a scheme that is objective and avoids subjective assessments. It can be applied to many types of experiments and for most species of animals used in research. It has the additional advantage that the type of adverse effect does not have to be specified, e.g., pain, distress, suffering or lasting harm, as it measures the impact of the experiment on the animals, which is more likely to reflect their emotional state. The scheme can also be used to assess the effectiveness of any alleviative therapy. This paper presents and illustrates, with a working example, a hypothesis for the assessment of ongoing severity before and during an experiment that will enable humane endpoints and intervention points to be applied accurately and reproducibly, as well as helping to implement any national legal severity limits in subacute and chronic animal experiments, e.g., as specified by the competent authority. The underlying assumption of the model framework is that the degree of deviation from normality of specified measurable biological criteria will reflect the level of pain, suffering, distress and lasting harm incurred by or during an experiment. The choice of criteria will normally reflect the impact on an animal and have to be chosen by scientists and those caring for the animals. They will usually include measurements of good health such as temperature, body weight, body condition and behaviour, which vary according to the species, husbandry and experimental protocols and, in some species, unusual parameters such as time of the year (e.g., migrating birds). In animal research legislation, endpoints or severity limits may be specified so that individual animals do not suffer unnecessarily or endure severe pain and distress that is long-lasting (Directive 2010/63/EU, Art.15.2). In addition, the overall severity is estimated and classified as part of the harm: benefit licence assessment. I present a mathematical model to analyse the measurement data to determine the degree of harm (or severity) incurred. The results can be used to initiate alleviative treatment if required or if permitted during the course of an experiment. In addition, any animal determined to have breached the severity classification of a procedure can be humanely killed, treated or withdrawn from the experiment. The system incorporates the flexibility to be used in most animal research work by being tailored to the research, the procedures carried out and the species under investigation. The criteria used to score severity can also be used as additional scientific outcome criteria and for an analysis of the scientific integrity of the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Agronomía & Ambiente is the property of Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Agronomia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revue d'élevage et de Médecine Vétérinaire des pays Tropicaux is the property of CIRAD and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Jerash archaeological site holds great significance as one of the most prominent Roman sites in the Middle East. In our research paper, we present an assortment of marine shells discovered in the northern region of the Jerash archaeological site during the University of Jordan's excavations from 2017 to 2019. We analyze the shells to determine their species. Additionally, we document the human modifications of the shells in order to reconstruct their possible use. The number of shells is small, but their value is heightened by the variety of species represented and the human modifications observed. The most frequently found shell are 12 murex (11 are Bolinus brandaris). Some shells exhibit perforations, which could be attributed to various purposes such as adornments, the production of cosmetics, or souvenirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Object detection is a method for recognizing and detecting various objects present in an image or video by using the combination of learning approaches such as classification, recognition, and object localization. The identification of animal species in the wild through camera traps continues to pose an unsolved challenge, primarily attributed to various difficulties arising from shooting conditions such as fluctuating illumination, diverse weather patterns, seasonal changes, and complex backgrounds. Additionally, the unpredictable movements, diverse shapes and poses, and occlusions caused by natural objects contribute to the complexity, making accurate recognition a persistent issue. This paper utilizes the frameworks of YOLOv5 and Detectron2 for classifying animal images into predefined classes along with annotated regions. These automated frameworks for recognition and subsequent identity detection are applied to the gorillas and monkeys using the Bristol and Monkey Species dataset respectively. The experiments conducted resulted in good results on both the datasets achieving the highest mAP of 95.07 for YOLOv5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Viking era and the Middle Ages, in the Baltic Sea area, the remains of alien animal species are found rarely but recurrently. These species, which were previously widely distributed in other regions, were originally considered "exotic" by the local people of the Baltic Sea region. Conversely, "exotic" was also used to describe the last local specimens of those indigenous species that had become very rare over time. Other categories of exotic animals can be defined: the first specimens of domesticated animals seen in an area, and mythical species whose existence was generally, but erroneously, assumed. In the present paper, the evidence of selected exotic species in the Baltic Sea area is analyzed with regard to both their cultural–historical and ecological significance. Many exotic specimens were used for social and hierarchical display, illustrating the individual's sophistication and broad knowledge of the world, their wealth, and their supra-regional influence. As a result, before Christianization, these species became part of burial rites. At the same time, some of these species became or were already integral parts of the fauna of the Baltic Sea region. Some newly immigrated species were welcomed by the people, while others were considered pests. "New", initially exotic, species formed the basis for the purely anthropogenic urban ecosystems that emerged during this period. Meanwhile, other, formerly common, species had become "exotic" because of their increasing rarity; when they became extinct, they left significant gaps in the biocoenoses wherein they were interconnected. These ecological effects, as well as some of the socio-cultural characteristics of exotic species, find parallels in modern times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning discriminative visual patterns from image local salient regions is widely used for fine-grained visual classification (FGVC) tasks such as plant or animal species classification. A large number of complex networks have been designed for learning discriminative feature representations. In this paper, we propose a novel local structure information (LSI) learning method for FGVC. Firstly, we indicate that the existing FGVC methods have not properly considered how to extract LSI from an input image for FGVC. Then an LSI extraction technique is introduced which has the ability to properly depict the properties of different local structure features in images. Secondly, a novel LSI learning module is proposed to be added into a given backbone network for enhancing the ability of the network to find salient regions. Thirdly, extensive experiments show that our proposed method achieves better performance on six image datasets. Particularly, the proposed method performs far better on datasets with a limited number of images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Score-based decision-support tools are increasingly used to identify potentially invasive non-native species as part of the risk screening (initial risk identification) component of non-native species risk analysis. Amongst these tools are the Weed Risk Assessment (WRA) and its derivatives, e.g. the Aquatic Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (ASISK), which have been extensively used on a large variety of terrestrial and aquatic plants and of aquatic animals worldwide. In this paper, a correction is made to the previous guidance on the use of two separate thresholds to risk-rank species, i.e. one for current climate conditions (basic risk assessment: BRA threshold) and one for future climate conditions (BRA + climate change assessment: BRA+CCA threshold). Re-evaluation of this practice reveals that, to avoid the incorrect risk-ranking of species, only the BRA threshold should be used in all future applications of WRAtype toolkits that include a separate set of climate-change questions - at present, this involves the AS-ISK and the newly released Terrestrial Animal Species Invasiveness Screening Kit (TAS-ISK). As a result of this revised guidance, all published studies containing AS-ISK applications to date are reviewed here, and where approrpiate corrected risk ranks are provided for species that were risk-ranked using a BRA+CCA threshold. Corrections are also made whenever applicable to published errors or incorrect risk ranks based on the BRA threshold in the AS-ISK applications reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predation is a powerful selective pressure and probably a driver of why many animal species live in groups. One key explanation for the evolution of sociality is the 'selfish herd' model, which describes how individuals who stay close to others effectively put neighbours between themselves and a predator to survive incoming attacks. This model is often illustrated with reference to herds of ungulates, schools of fish or flocks of birds. Yet in nature, when a predator strikes, herds are often found fleeing cohesively in the same direction, not jostling for position in the centre of the group. This paper highlights a critical assumption of the original model, namely that prey do not move in response to position of their predator. In this model, I relax this assumption and find that individuals who adopt 'selfish herd' behaviour are often more likely to be captured, because they end up at the back of a fleeing herd. By contrast, individuals that adopt a rule of 'neighbour to neighbour alignment' are able to avoid rearmost positions in a moving herd. Alignment is more successful than selfish herding across much of the parameter space, which may explain why highly aligned fleeing behaviour is commonly observed in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automatic prediction of the plant and animal species most likely to be observed at a given geo-location is useful for many scenarios related to biodiversity management and conservation. However, the sparseness of aerial images results in small discrepancies in the image appearance of different species categories. In this paper, we propose a novel Dynamic Vision Transformer (DViT) architecture to reduce the effect of small image discrepancies for plant and animal species recognition by aerial image and geo-location environment information. We extract the latent representation by sampling a subset of patches with low attention weights in the transformer encoder model with a learnable mask token for multimodal aerial images. At the same time, the geo-location environment information is added to the process of extracting the latent representation from aerial images and fused with the token with high attention weights to improve the distinguishability of representation by the dynamic attention fusion model. The proposed DViT method is evaluated on the GeoLifeCLEF 2021 and 2022 datasets, achieving state-of-the-art performance. The experimental results show that fusing the aerial image and multimodal geo-location environment information contributes to plant and animal species recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How social and ecological factors are associated with variation in dominance style across species of animals has been studied frequently, but the underlying processes are often not addressed. Theoretical research indicates that stronger spatial cohesion among individuals in a group causes a higher frequency of fighting and, thus, through the self-reinforcing effects of winning and losing fights, a stronger differentiation of the dominance hierarchy and dominance of females over more males. Our aim in the present paper is to study whether the same interrelationship among processes may underlie differences in dominance style among three species of lemur that differ in their degree of despotism: Lemur catta, Propithecus verreauxi and Eulemur rufifrons. We investigated their agonistic interactions and spatial cohesion based on 2752 h of observational data of 20 wild groups of these three species. We determined dominance style using the proportion of counter-aggression, with a lower proportion indicating a more despotic dominance style. We found that stronger spatial cohesion among individuals is associated with a higher rate of aggression, stronger despotism and dominance of females over more males. The results of our study emphasise the general importance of spatial cohesion in determining dominance style. Significance statement: Theoretical studies have shown that the spatial configuration of individuals in a group influences the dominance style. In an agent-based model, DomWorld, individuals are guided by simple rules of grouping and fighting and emergent patterns of behaviour switch between resembling those of despotic or egalitarian primates depending on the degree of cohesion in groups. Yet this link has seldom been studied empirically. We, therefore, examine the relevance of spatial cohesion on patterns of behaviour of individuals in groups of three species of lemur. We confirm the predictions from the model and show that stronger spatial cohesion results in more frequent aggression, a more despotic dominance style and stronger female dominance over males. In light of this, we urge future research of animal dominance to include measures of cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]