W ild vertebrates are a source of food and income for millions of people throughout the tropics. However, overhunting is a major concern, causing the decline of large-bodied animal species and even driving some to extinction (Maxwell et al. 2016; Ripple et al. 2016; Benítez-López et al. 2017). Unsustainable hunting threatens the food security of rural human populations that depend on wild meat (Nasi et al. 2011; Cawthorn and Hoffman 2015). In tropical forests, wild animals are hunted with a variety of methods, involving both traditional (eg bow and arrow) and modern (eg firearms) weapons (Fa and Brown 2009). Methods have improved incrementally over time, through the use of metal wire for the manufacture of snares and traps in Africa, cheaper guns, and the availability of incandescent battery-powered flashlights for hunting at night (Hames 1979; Redford and Robinson 1987; Alvard 1995). Flashlights are used to locate animals using the eyeshine that many species exhibit, a method known as "spotlighting" or "lamping" (Hames 1979). Bright lights at night temporarily immobilize many animals, which appear to perceive the light as non-threatening; this behavior allows hunters to approach within a short distance of the targeted animals, thereby greatly improving their chances of making a kill. Powerful, white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are increasingly replacing incandescent bulbs in flashlights. LED flashlights are brighter and approximately 10-20 times more efficient than incandescent bulbs (Pimputkar et al. 2009). Although LEDs have existed for decades as low-power indicator lights, and high-power white-light emitters have been in production since 1999, this technology has remained prohibitively expensive for hunters in developing countries for many years. Based on observations made by our collaborative research groups, LED flashlight prices became competitive with those of incandescent flashlights around 2012, and LED flashlights are now available in rural markets throughout tropical Latin America, Africa, and Asia, where they are commonly used in nocturnal hunting. We investigated the impact of LED flashlights in increasing wild mammal offtake by hunters in tropical forests through interviews with commercial and subsistence hunters in Peru, Brazil, and Gabon. We support our qualitative analysis with data from hunting events monitored for 13 years in the Brazilian Amazon, which allow for the comparison of hunting returns before and after the introduction of LED lights. Methods Hunter interviews Semi-structured questionnaires were administered to 120 shotgun hunters in three countries (Peru, Brazil, and Gabon)
BACKGROUND: Agricultural insecticides are believed to play a role in global pollinator decline. In mass-flowering orchard crops, recommendations to reduce exposure of pollinators to insecticides include spraying at periods when bees aren't foraging, such as dusk and dawn and outside of crop flowering times. However, the presence of flowering weeds within orchards mean pollinators may still be found foraging throughout the growing season, increasing the likelihood that exposure will still occur. We hypothesized that removing these weeds within orchard groundcover may reduce pollinator foraging post-bloom and thus reduce exposure of this group to pesticides. We tested this hypothesis by using herbicide to remove flowering broadleaf weeds in the sod middles ('groundcover') between rows of a nectarine orchard in New Jersey, USA, and assessing the effect on pollinator visitation via three different methods.RESULTS: Significantly lower abundance, richness, diversity, and evenness of pollinators were found in plots where herbicide treatment had removed the majority of flowering weeds, compared to untreated plots. This was the case for bees, and for pollinators overall, and was reflected in both visual observations and active sampling through sweep netting. Passive sampling with blue vane traps failed to detect a difference between treatments.CONCLUSION: Groundcover management in orchards is often employed as part of integrated pest management programs to remove alternative host plants of insect pests. The findings of this study show that it is also effective in reducing post-bloom pollinator foraging in orchards, thus potentially preventing exposure of these beneficial organisms to harmful insecticides.
Food security depends on the ability of staple crops to tolerate new abiotic and biotic pressures. Wheat, barley, and other small grains face substantial yield losses under all climate change scenarios. Intra-plot diversification is an important strategy for smallholder farmers to mitigate losses due to variable environmental conditions. While this commonly involves sowing polycultures of distinct species from different botanical families in the same field or multiple varieties of the same species (varietal mixtures), mixed plantings of multiple species from the same family are less well known. However, the sowing of maslins, or cereal species mixtures, was formerly widespread in Eurasia and Northern Africa and continues to be employed by smallholder farmers in the Caucasus, Greek Islands, and the Horn of Africa, where they may represent a risk management strategy for climate variability. Here, we review ethnohistorical, agronomic, and ecological literature on maslins with a focus on climate change adaptation, including two case studies from Ethiopian smallholder farmers. The major points are the following: (1) farmers in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Georgia report that mixtures are a strategy for ensuring some yield under unpredictable precipitation and on marginal soils; (2) experimental trials support these observations, demonstrating increased yield advantage and stability under certain conditions, making maslins a potentially adaptive practice when crops are impacted by new biotic and abiotic conditions due to climate change; (3) maslins may balance trade-offs between interfamilial species plantings and varietal mixtures, and expand the total portfolio of traits available for formulating mixtures from varietal mixtures alone; and (4) they may buffer against the impacts of climate trends through passive shifts in species composition in response to environmental pressures. We demonstrate the potential benefits of maslins as an agroecological intensification and climate adaptation strategy and lay out the next steps and outstanding questions regarding the applicability of these cropping systems.
Our understanding of the ecological interactions between plant viruses, their insect vectors, and their host plants has increased rapidly over the past decade. The suite of viruses known collectively as the yellow dwarf viruses infect an extensive range of cultivated and noncultivated grasses worldwide and is one of the best-studied plant virus systems. The yellow dwarf viruses are ubiquitous in cereal crops, where they can significantly limit yields, and there is growing recognition that they are also ubiquitous in grassland ecosystems, where they can influence community dynamics. Here, we discuss recent research that has explored ( a) the extent and impact of yellow dwarf viruses in a diversity of plant communities, ( b) the role of vector behavior in virus transmission, and ( c) the prospects for impacts of climate change—including rising temperatures, drought, and elevated CO2—on the epidemiology of yellow dwarf viruses.
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