Céide Fields is a 12 km2 Neolithic field system in North Mayo in the west of Ireland. The fields, enclosed by an integrated system of stone walls, have been preserved intact by a cover of blanket bog that is >4 m deep in places. At many locations within this blanket bog the stumps of ancient pines (Pinus sylvestris) are found in situ. The pine roots in most cases are either on the surface of the mineral soil under the peat or at an intermediate level in the peat itself. The age of the trees in the bog overlying Céide Fields is therefore of great significance for the dating of the fields, as the trees must be younger than the bog in which they are growing, which in turn must be younger than the field system beneath it. We present here the dates (N = 15) for pine trees from the bogs overlying Céide Fields and the dates (N = 29) of pine trees from other areas of the North Mayo blanket bog. We compare these pine dates with published dates of peat associated with a major pollen analytical study from within the fields and with published dates for bog pine from Scotland. The results of the study suggest that the dates for the construction and period of use of Céide Fields and other Neolithic pre-bog field systems in North Mayo are older than anticipated and that the date for initiation of blanket bog in many parts of North Mayo is also older than previously estimated. Further, the range of dates of the pine stumps indicates a synchronic event contemporary with a similar phenomenon observed in Scotland.

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Organisms can behaviorally, physiologically, and morphologically adjust to environmental variation via integrative hormonal mechanisms, ultimately allowing animals to cope with environmental change. The stress response to environmental and social changes commonly promotes survival at the expense of reproduction. However, despite climate change impacts on population declines and diversity loss, few studies have attributed hormonal stress responses, or their regulatory effects, to climate change in the wild. Here, we report hormonal and fitness responses of individual wild fish to a recent large-scale sea warming event that caused widespread bleaching on coral reefs. This 14-month monitoring study shows a strong correlation between anemone bleaching (zooxanthellae loss), anemonefish stress response, and reproductive hormones that decreased fecundity by 73%. These findings suggest that hormone stress responses play a crucial role in changes to population demography following climate change and plasticity in hormonal responsiveness may be a key mechanism enabling individual acclimation to climate change.

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