Enhanced Ecologies and Ecosystem Engineering

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian J. McNiven ◽  
Tiina Manne ◽  
Anne Ross
Keyword(s):  
Food Resource ◽  
Ecosystem Engineering ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Aboriginal Australians ◽  
The Past ◽  
Resource Enhancement ◽  
Agricultural Societies ◽  
Intimate Knowledge ◽  
Animal Resource

Anthropological and archaeological representations of Aboriginal Australians as hunter-gatherers adapting to the natural availability of food resources are simplistic and inconsistent with ethnographic records of active, strategic, and sociopolitically meaningful resource enhancement. Scholarship over the past four decades has documented plant and animal food resource enhancement by Aboriginal Australians that blur socioeconomic boundaries with agricultural societies of New Guinea. Enhancements were achieved by using intimate knowledge of local ecological processes to modify ecosystems through a range of strategies such as landscape burning, animal translocation, protected rearing, shelter creation, and restocking. These strategies were embedded within broader sociocultural and sociopolitical domains that were often accompanied by ritual. Such engineered food enhancement practices reveal that many documented and modelled associations between environment and behaviour are in fact correlations between behaviour and the products of behaviour. The uneven distribution of animal resource enhancement practices across Australia indicates considerable regional diversity and supports existing views that many enhancements are related to regionally specific and historically contingent developments in social complexity.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianfranco Pacchioni
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Radical Transformation

About 10,000 years ago, at the beginning of the agriculturalrevolution, on the whole earth lived between 5 and 8 million hunter-gatherers, all belonging to the Homo sapiens species. Five thousand years later, freed from the primary needs for survival, some belonging to that species enjoyed the privilege of devoting themselves to philosophical speculation and the search for transcendental truths. It was only in the past two hundred years, however, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, that reaping nature’s secrets and answering fundamental questions posed by the Universe have become for many full-time activities, on the way to becoming a real profession. Today the number of scientists across the globe has reached and exceeded 10 million, that is, more than the whole human race 10,000 years ago. If growth continues at the current rate, in 2050 we will have 35 million people committed full-time to scientific research. With what consequences, it remains to be understood. For almost forty years I myself have been concerned with science in a continuing, direct, and passionate way. Today I perceive, along with many colleagues, especially of my generation, that things are evolving and have changed deeply, in ways unimaginable until a few years ago and, in some respects, not without danger. What has happened in the world of science in recent decades is more than likely a mirror of a similar and equally radical transformation taking place in modern society, particularly with the advent ...

scholarly journals Spatiotemporal Variability in Extreme Precipitation in China from Observations and Projections

Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 1089 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifeng Peng ◽  
Xiang Zhao ◽  
Donghai Wu ◽  
Bijian Tang ◽  
Peipei Xu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Extreme Precipitation ◽  
Spatiotemporal Variability ◽  
Tibet Plateau ◽  
Cmip5 Models ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spatiotemporal Characteristics ◽  
Extreme Precipitation Events ◽  
Precipitation Events

Extreme precipitation events, which have intensified with global warming over the past several decades, will become more intense in the future according to model projections. Although many studies have been performed, the occurrence patterns for extreme precipitation events in past and future periods in China remain unresolved. Additionally, few studies have explained how extreme precipitation events developed over the past 58 years and how they will evolve in the next 90 years as global warming becomes much more serious. In this paper, we evaluated the spatiotemporal characteristics of extreme precipitation events using indices for the frequency, quantity, intensity, and proportion of extreme precipitation, which were proposed by the World Meteorological Organization. We simultaneously analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics of extreme precipitation in China from 2011 to 2100 using data obtained from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models. Despite the fixed threshold, 95th percentile precipitation values were also used as the extreme precipitation threshold to reduce the influence of various rainfall events caused by different geographic locations; then, eight extreme precipitation indices (EPIs) were calculated to evaluate extreme precipitation in China. We found that the spatial characteristics of the eight EPIs exhibited downward trends from south to north. In the periods 1960–2017 and 2011–2100, trends in the EPIs were positive, but there were differences between different regions. In the past 58 years, the extreme precipitation increased in the northwest, southeast, and the Tibet Plateau of China, while decreased in northern China. Almost all the trends of EPIs are positive in the next two periods (2011–2055 and 2056–2100) except for some EPIs, such as intensity of extreme precipitation, which decrease in southeastern China in the second period (2056–2100). This study suggests that the frequency of extreme precipitation events in China will progressively increase, which implies that a substantial burden will be placed on social economies and terrestrial ecological processes.

scholarly journals Negative frequency dependent selection contributes to the maintenance of a global polymorphism in mitochondrial DNA

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zorana Kurbalija Novičić ◽  
Ahmed Sayadi ◽  
Mihailo Jelić ◽  
Göran Arnqvist
Keyword(s):  
Mitochondrial Dna ◽  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Life History ◽  
Balancing Selection ◽  
Food Resource ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Central Process ◽  
Frequency Dependent ◽  
Frequency Dependent Selection ◽  
Negative Frequency Dependent Selection

Abstract Background Understanding the forces that maintain diversity across a range of scales is at the very heart of biology. Frequency-dependent processes are generally recognized as the most central process for the maintenance of ecological diversity. The same is, however, not generally true for genetic diversity. Negative frequency dependent selection, where rare genotypes have an advantage, is often regarded as a relatively weak force in maintaining genetic variation in life history traits because recombination disassociates alleles across many genes. Yet, many regions of the genome show low rates of recombination and genetic variation in such regions (i.e., supergenes) may in theory be upheld by frequency dependent selection. Results We studied what is essentially a ubiquitous life history supergene (i.e., mitochondrial DNA) in the fruit fly Drosophila subobscura, showing sympatric polymorphism with two main mtDNA genotypes co-occurring in populations world-wide. Using an experimental evolution approach involving manipulations of genotype starting frequencies, we show that negative frequency dependent selection indeed acts to maintain genetic variation in this region. Moreover, the strength of selection was affected by food resource conditions. Conclusions Our work provides novel experimental support for the view that balancing selection through negative frequency dependency acts to maintain genetic variation in life history genes. We suggest that the emergence of negative frequency dependent selection on mtDNA is symptomatic of the fundamental link between ecological processes related to resource use and the maintenance of genetic variation.

Delicate and Noxious Scrub

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
JC Noble
Keyword(s):  
New South ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Research Directions ◽  
The Past ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Future Research Directions ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Strategies

Semi-arid woodlands are an important part of the Australian landscape and they have been the focus for scientific research by CSIRO since the 1960s. This book reviews that research and sets it in a historical perspective. It examines the development of pastoral science, with particular reference to the farming frontier in western New South Wales, as well as research conducted by CSIRO over the past thirty years aimed at helping manage increasing shrub densities while improving productivity. The author discusses past, current and future research directions and looks at how management perceptions and approaches continue to change as understanding of ecological processes and new strategies evolve.

The Re-excavation of Zarzi, 1971

1981 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 19-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ghanim Wahida
Keyword(s):  
Carrying Capacity ◽  
Short Distance ◽  
Mountainous Area ◽  
Zagros Mountains ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Ecological Zones ◽  
Wild Game ◽  
The Past ◽  
Dry Steppe ◽  
Winter Migration

SummaryStratigraphic and typological analysis tends to confirm the two-fold division of the Zarzian suggested by Dorothy Garrod, while palaeobotanical data indicate that a very dry steppe prevailed throughout the sequence. Both the low carrying capacity of the contemporary vegetation then and at present in winter, and the resultant winter migration to warmer areas of wild game at present (and presumably in the past) suggest cyclical short distance movements by hunter-gatherers and fishers within two ecological zones: 1, the mountainous area which must have been occupied from spring to autumn; 2, the winter camping grounds in the upper plains along the foothills region of the Zagros Mountains.

Exploitation of wild plants by the early Neolithic hunter–gatherers of the Western Desert, Egypt: Nabta Playa as a case-study

Antiquity ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 71 (274) ◽  
pp. 932-941 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krystyna Wasylikowa ◽  
Józef Mitka ◽  
Fred Wendorf ◽  
Romuald Schild
Keyword(s):  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Western Desert ◽  
Food Plants ◽  
Wild Plants ◽  
Wild Food ◽  
Wild Food Plants ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Agricultural Societies

The role of plants in the subsistence economy of pre-agricultural societies of the eastern Sahara is poorly known because vegetal remains, except for wood charcoal, are seldom found in archaeological sites. Site E-75-6 at Nabta Playa, with rich assemblages of charred seeds and fruits, is exceptional. Around 8000 b.p. the inhabitants of this site collected a wide spectrum of wild food plants. Wild sorghum was of special interest and its occasional cultivation cannot be excluded.

scholarly journals In search of language contact between Jarawa and Aka-Bea: The languages of South Andaman

1970 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Anvita Abbi ◽  
Pramod Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Similarity Judgment ◽  
Andaman Islands ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Endangered Language ◽  
Loan Word ◽  
South Andaman ◽  
Lexical Items

The paper brings forth a preliminary report on the comparative data available on the extinct language Aka-Bea (Man 1923) and the endangered language Jarawa spoken in the south and the central parts of the Andaman Islands. Speakers of Aka-Bea, a South Andaman language of the Great Andamanese family and the speakers of Jarawa, the language of a distinct language family (Abbi 2006, 2009, Blevins 2008) lived adjacent to each other, i.e. in the southern region of the Great Andaman Islands in the past. Both had been hunter-gatherers and never had any contact with each other (Portman 1899, 1990). The Jarawas have been known for living in isolation for thousands of years, coming in contact with the outside world only recently in 1998. It is, then surprising to discover traces of some language-contact in the past between the two communities. Not a large database, but a few examples of lexical similarities between Aka-Bea and Jarawa are investigated here. Words for comparison are selected from the Automated Similarity Judgment Programme-list ASJP (Holman et al. 2008, Brown et al. 2007, 2008, Wichmann 2010) as well as from the Loan Word Typology research (Haspelmath and Tadmor 2009). Although we have data only for 100 items, we further compared the lexical items against the Swadesh list (1955) (see appendix 5). The result achieved exposes for the first time, the possibility of language contact between Aka-Bea and Jarawa in the past. We pose a very relevant question here: can enmities and rivalries induce changes in languages which can be ascribed to contact of a very special kind? We conclude by claiming that prototypical least borrowable lexical items can also be borrowed in a very specific context despite the absence of interactive communication between the two communities.

scholarly journals The Influence of Extrafloral Nectaries on Arboreal Ant Species Richness in Tree Communities

Sociobiology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 162
Author(s):  
Marcelo Silva Madureira ◽  
Tathiana Guerra Sobrinho ◽  
José Henrique Schoereder
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Food Resource ◽  
Local Variation ◽  
Tree Density ◽  
Extrafloral Nectaries ◽  
Coefficient Of Determination ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Tree Communities ◽  
Total Tree

Studies investigating the role of resource availability in the species richness patterns can elucidate ecological processes and contribute to conservation strategies. In this study, we test two hypotheses: i) arboreal ant species richness increases with abundance of extrafloral nectaries-bearing trees; and ii) arboreal ant species richness increases with the diversity of extrafloral nectaries-bearing trees. We used data of ant sampling and tree inventories from 30 plots of Brazilian Cerrado. Arboreal ant species richness was positively influenced by the proportional abundance of extrafloral nectaries-bearing trees, total tree density and total tree diversity. There was no effect of species richness of extrafloral nectaries-bearing trees. Coefficient of determination of proportional abundance of extrafloral nectaries-bearing trees was larger when compared to coefficient obtained using tree density as explanatory variable. These results suggest that variation in arboreal ant species richness is better explained by extrafloral nectaries-bearing tree abundance than total tree density. Generalist foraging behavior of sampled ant species may explain their association with proportional abundance of extrafloral nectariesbearing trees and their non-significant relation with proportional richness of extrafloral nectaries-bearing tree species. Extrafloral nectaries-bearing trees abundance may be a specific estimate of the amount of food resource available in plots. Thus, this is a more specific way to quantify which resources may explain variation of the arboreal ant species richness in tree communities. We hope these results will be helpful to understanding the local variation in ant species richness and as criteria to biodiversity conservation.

scholarly journals CONSTRUCTING BALINESE ANALOGY AND PROVERB BASED ON BIOLOGICAL PHENOMENA: THE INITIATIVE OF BALINESE BIODIVERSITY DOCUMENTATION

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 253
Author(s):  
I.G.P. Suryadarma
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Ocean Waves ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Biological Phenomena ◽  
The People ◽  
Hunting And Gathering ◽  
Process Learning ◽  
The Universe

<p>The nature is real teacher for a person who wish to develop their intelligence. Intelli­gence is a natural quality of live. The universe intelligence are hidden everywhere, and if we have eyes to see, we can see it everywhere. We can learn from animals on how they sleep, they live and their interaction each others. Most people in every traditional culture learn based on their beliefs rather than their reason (Suryadarma, 2012). There are many different ways to look the uniqueness of biodiversity and the interrelationship between humans and their social and biophysical surroundings. <br />People in the past; i.e. hunting and gathering communities were heavily depended on their immediate natural resources to meet most of their basic needs. Therefore, they closely interacted with their environment and thereby, gained a sound knowledge and understand­ing the uniqueness of each species and its underlying ecological processes. Many events in daily life is interesting, in the sense that many phenomena and objects can be directly ob­served. The richness of biological pehenomena in the ecosystems can be directly observed. Some phenomena had recorded as a proverbs, analogy and song. <br />Balinese use the uniqueness of biodiversity resources and ecological phenomena in their daily life to find analogy, proverb and song to reflect their life. Yesudian (1989) declared; that man is the culminating point of the creation but in the man alone are animal, human and divine qualities alive and active together. Which aspects of our nature are to manifest? To manifest the humanity is the purpose of our earthly life (Suryadarma, 2010). This is the rea­son why the Balinese use proverbs, analogy, and song as part of learning process. Learning is processes of our escalation where it processes e.g. it can be analogized with the process of transformation on butterfly life cycle <br />Tsunami is a large ocean waves that washes everything in the shallow water of a shore­line where globalization can be analogized with tsunami process in which the world increas­ingly their activities. Globalization is the fact where the people have been two ways in look­ing at it impact on their life activities. It is the reason why each person use different ways looking of proverbs, analogy in our cultural activities. How develop its in deferent level and different site into better science for better life? How to explore and develop it as sources of biodiversity documentation information because these activities will be developed the fra­grance of ecological wisdom and enter in every one heart.</p>

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