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Figure 5 in Food storage and morphological divergence between worker and soldier castes in a subterranean myrmicine ant, Carebara perpusilla

Figure 5. Different stages of burial of a dead mealworm. (a) t = 0, (b) t = 18 hours, (c) t = 96 hours after introduction.

Figure 4 in Food storage and morphological divergence between worker and soldier castes in a subterranean myrmicine ant, Carebara perpusilla

Figure 4. Variation of head (a), mesosoma (b) and gaster length (c) between castes in C. perpusilla. Different letters indicate significant differences. N = 8 ants per caste. Error bars indicate standard deviation.

Figure 2 in Food storage and morphological divergence between worker and soldier castes in a subterranean myrmicine ant, Carebara perpusilla

Figure 2. Workers moved soil pellets in the tiny void between glass and plaster to create barricades around the nest (a). Close-up of the brood (b), and workers carrying soil pellets (C).

Figure 6. Competitive interaction between one C in Food storage and morphological divergence between worker and soldier castes in a subterranean myrmicine ant, Carebara perpusilla

Figure 6. Competitive interaction between one C. perpusilla (black arrow) and two P. pygmaea (antennas pointing forwards, red arrow and asterisk). Other P. pygmaea feed on a dead mealworm.

Figure 1 in Food storage and morphological divergence between worker and soldier castes in a subterranean myrmicine ant, Carebara perpusilla

Figure 1. Adults and brood of C. perpusilla. Medium larvae (ML) are located at the periphery whereas small (SL) and big larvae (BL) are gathered in the centre.

Figure 8 in Food storage and morphological divergence between worker and soldier castes in a subterranean myrmicine ant, Carebara perpusilla

Figure 8. (a) Digestive tract of a C. perpusilla non-replete soldier. (b) Replete queen with the terminal abdomen segments dissected, showing how the crop occupies the entire abdomen.

Figure 3 in Food storage and morphological divergence between worker and soldier castes in a subterranean myrmicine ant, Carebara perpusilla

Figure 3. Comparison of C. perpusilla castes showing worker (top-left), soldier (top-right) and queen (bottom-left). For the queen, a replete gaster was added as an inset (bottom-right, same scale).

opencc-zeroSep 2021View details →

Supplementary material 1 from: Ngoute CO, Hunter D, Lecoq M (2021) Perception and knowledge of grasshoppers among indigenous communities in tropical forest areas of southern Cameroon: Ecosystem conservation, food security, and health. Journal of Orthoptera Research 30(2): 117-130. https://doi.org/10.3897/jor.30.64266

Supplementary material 1 from: Ngoute CO, Hunter D, Lecoq M (2021) Perception and knowledge of grasshoppers among indigenous communities in tropical forest areas of southern Cameroon: Ecosystem conservation, food security, and health. Journal of Orthoptera Research 30(2): 117-130. https://doi.org/10.3897/jor.30.64266

opencc-zeroSep 2021View details →

High resource overlap and small dietary differences are widespread in food-limited warbler communities

Although both interspecific competition and coexistence mechanisms are central to ecological and evolutionary theory, past empirical studies have generally focused on simple (two-species) communities over short time periods. Experimental tests of these species interactions are challenging in complex study systems. Moreover, a number of studies of 'imperfect generalists', consistent with Liem's Paradox, raise questions about the ability of evolved species differences to effectively partition niche space when resources vary considerably across the annual cycle. Here we used a recently developed theoretical framework to combine past research on population-level processes with observational data on resource use to test for ongoing interspecific competition and understand the nature of resource overlap. We compared species diet overlaps and differences in several distinctive communities centred on a focal species, the American Redstart Setophaga ruticilla replicated both spatially and seasonally, in combination with documentation of population regulation to assess the ability of similar species to partition dietary niche space and limit interspecific competition. Our results document high dietary overlap in most of the communities studied, with only subtle differentiation consistent with known species-differences in foraging behaviour and morphology. These findings are largely consistent with species foraging as imperfect generalists. However, in contrast to past studies, the high diet overlaps observed here during times of inferred resource scarcity were driven by low value prey taxa (e.g. small ants) and did not involve truly 'private' resources. All of these factors increase the potential negative impacts of interspecific competition and limit the ability of these birds to avoid competition if conditions further deteriorate, either seasonally or at longer intervals.

opencc-by-4.0Sep 2021View details →

SETP Food

Climate-induced shock on crop productivity in the short (around 2030) and medium (around 2050) term. Productivity changes are selected as the overall largest annual drop in yields at a European level in the 30-year moving window around 2030 and 2050.

opencc-zeroOct 2021View details →

Third and fourth trophic level composition shift in an aphid-parasitoid-hyperparasitoid food web limits aphid control in an intercropping system

1. Understanding how resource diversification affects ecological interactions, food web structure and ecosystem functioning is essential in both fundamental and applied ecology. While plant diversification strategies (either in- or around-field) are often proposed in agricultural landscapes as practices to improve the biological control of herbivores by natural enemies, results remain variable and unsure. 2. Here, we studied the effect of an in-field diversification practice (the intercropping of leguminous crops within cereal fields, an increasingly common practice but with inconsistent results on biological control) on cereal aphid control and the structure of a cereal-aphid-parasitoid-hyperparasitoid food web for two years. 3. We report that aphid control was not increased in mixed fields, nor was cereal parasitoid diversity and food web complexity. Nevertheless, the provision of alternative hosts in mixed fields led to a functional community composition shift, favouring generalist parasitoid species over specialist ones. 4. Moreover, we observed a higher hyperparasitism rate in mixed fields, suggesting that secondary parasitoids were favoured by alternative resources, which may have disrupted aphid control by primary parasitoids. 5. Synthesis and applications. This study demonstrates that parasitoid community composition shift and increased top-down control by the fourth trophic level can impact parasitoid efficiency to control herbivores. These results highlight the necessity to study fine-scale mechanisms within food webs to be able to set-up efficient methods to support biodiversity and associated ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes.

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2022View details →

Listeria - Case studies in Food Safety

Webinar - Listeria - Case studies in Food Safety

opencc-zeroDec 2022View details →

Both sexes responded equally to food restriction

The collected juveniles were randomly assigned into two groups (Nstarving = 161, Ncontrol = 159), the control group was supplied with abundant food across the entire experiment process, and the experiment group was provided with only half amount of required food resource for the entire development process.In order to investigate the effects of food restriction on the development duration, adult body length and weight of spiders and the differences between female and male spiders, we measured the body length of each spider every five days since the experiment started until they reached adulthood, then their body weight, sex and the development duration were recorded.In order to explore the behavioral responses, concerning daily time allocation and hunting, of spiders between different food conditions, sexes and growth stages, we randomly selected some spiders from "Experiment 1" and carried out the following trails. Detailed number of spiders from each sex, each growth stage and each food condition are summarized in supplementary materials.

opencc-zeroDec 2022View details →

Habitat use and foraging parameters of breeding Skylarks indicate no seasonal decrease in food availability in heterogeneous farmland

Reduced food availability during chick raising is a major driver of farmland bird declines. For the Eurasian Skylark (Alauda arvensis), food availability is determined by various factors (i.e., arthropod abundance/diversity, accessibility of the vegetation, distance to foraging sites). In modern farmland, it is supposed to decrease over the breeding season due to less penetrable vegetation. We explored foraging habitat selection by chick-raising Skylarks with a focus on the seasonal dynamics of habitat use and food availability. We investigated i) habitat selection concerning prey biomass/diversity, vegetation cover, and distance to foraging sites, ii) the overall and seasonal habitat use, and iii) seasonal developments of foraging parameters (e.g., the feeding frequency) as indicators of food availability. We collected data on foraging habitats and foraging parameters of chick-raising Skylark pairs at 51 nests from a Central European population in 2018 and 2019. Prey biomass/diversity and vegetation cover were measured for all habitats around 42 of these nests. As revealed by multivariate and compositional analyses, Skylarks mainly selected foraging habitats based on the proximity to nests. The most frequent habitats within home ranges could not be ranked according to an overall importance for foraging and their use partially changed over time. The feeding frequency increased throughout the breeding season, while other foraging parameters did not show significant changes. In contrast to our expectations, our data indicated therefore an increase, not a decrease in food availability in the late breeding season. This also implies that the habitat use was constantly suitable to raise offspring. We interpret this to be a consequence of the heterogeneous farmland composition of the study area that enabled Skylarks to establish a diverse home range and to benefit from synergetic effects of neighboring habitat types. Thus, our findings provide support for the high importance of crop diversity in Skylark conservation.

opencc-zeroJan 2023View details →

Global and local drivers of the relative importance of allochthonous and autochthonous energy sources to freshwater food webs

Resource quantity (i.e., organic matter; OM) is a main driver of the prevailing energy pathway in freshwater food webs. The OM pool is mainly composed of allochthonous material, a primary resource for freshwater consumers. Contrastingly, small amounts of autochthonous OM (i.e., algae) can subsidize aquatic communities due to its higher nutritional quality. To date, there is no consensus about the relative importance of allochthonous and autochthonous OMs for freshwater food webs or the environmental factors driving their relative importance. We fill this gap by evaluating the relative importance of allochthonous and autochthonous OM sources for freshwater food webs on a global scale through a meta-analytical approach. We gathered the outcome of stable isotope mixing models of 2,789 cases from 58 published studies and calculated a response ratio between the mean contributions of allochthonous and autochthonous OM for freshwater consumers. Using mixed-effect models and a multimodel inference approach, we tested the influence of latitude, habitat type, ecosystem size, climate, and terrestrial productivity over the response ratio. The relative contribution of autochthonous was higher in lotic systems. In lentic systems, increasing terrestrial productivity increased the relative contribution of autochthonous OM, while increasing precipitation and temperature seasonality reduced this relative contribution. We suggested that factors increasing terrestrial productivity might also boost autochthonous OM in these systems, while precipitation increases the transport of allochthonous OM to freshwater habitats. We did not find any relationship between environmental factors and the relative contribution of autochthonous OM for lotic systems. We concluded that the relative contribution of allochthonous and autochthonous energy sources to freshwater food webs differs between lotic and lentic ecosystems and it is dependent on multiple environmental factors.

opencc-by-4.0Jan 2023View details →

The effect of element intensity that distinguishes flavour in a food packaging on the memory and perception of Peruvian millennials and centennials

ABSTRACT Background: Globalization has greatly facilitated access to all kinds of products and brands from different parts of the world, increasing consumer choices and, consequently, competition among packaged products. For this reason, a brand's packaging design to attract consumers must stand out among its competitors, especially if it is a new product or a new flavour. In this context, it becomes necessary to explore dimensions of packaging design that allow a high degree of differentiation. In that way, there are very efficient strategies and approaches used in the literature to perform this exploration in packagings, such as perception evaluations measured with attributes and eye-tracking technology that records direct information about visual attention on the most distinctive elements. Thus, the present study aims to determine the impact of the presentation of a new flavour on packaging by varying the intensity of the stimulus that represents it according to the Weber-Fechner law, using three main elements of the packaging: text, colour, and image. Methods: The experiment exposed three groups of participants (n=30) to 3 stimuli, which were based on adding an element as the intensity of the flavour description of three products from three different food categories was intended to increase. This study used the RealEye webcam eye-tracking platform to measure attention, and a self-administered questionnaire was used to examine perception and recall.  Results: First, the results show that greater intensity expressed in a more significant number of visual elements facilitates flavour distinction. Second, the results reveal that perceived difficulty in flavour differentiation correlates strongly with the presence of colour and image.  Conclusions: Therefore, this study provides an approach to ways to optimize the intensity of flavour distinctiveness elements that may be useful, especially for less recognized brands.

opencc-zeroJan 2023View details →

Larval development and poor food availability: Local adaptations and plasticity in a widespread amphibian species

Data of fire salamander larvae reared under rich and poor food conditions. Data include also length, growth rate and number of prey attacked by the same larvae for 30 days after metamorphosis. In this study, we considered two extrinsic factors such as food availability and altitude and we examined their effects on larval growth, timing of metamorphosis and survival in fire salamander larvae. We also investigated whether larval diet has repercussions on growth rate of juvenile salamanders in the month following metamorphosis. Our experimental study was conducted on 150 newborn fire salamander larvae from 15 epigean sites at different altitudes (ranging between 250 and 1491 m a.s.l.). The larvae of each site were divided into two treatment groups: "poor" and "rich" food conditions.

opencc-by-4.0Feb 2023View details →

Bulk stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes of food residues on pottery, stable carbon isotopes of lipids from pottery

Supplementary data for Philippsen, B. (2023) Changing diet in a changing world. In: Groß, D. and Rothstein , M. (eds) Changing Identities in a Changing World.

opencc-by-4.0Feb 2023View details →

A spatio-temporal dataset on food flows for four West African cities

Gaining insight into the food sourcing practices of cities is important to understand their resilience to climate change, economic crisis, as well as pandemics affecting food supply and security. To fill existing knowledge gaps in this area food flow data were collected in West Africa for four cities - Bamako (Mali), Bamenda (Cameroon), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), and Tamale (Ghana). The data covers, depending on the city, road, rail, boat, and air traffic. Surveys were conducted for one week on average during the peak harvest, lean, and rainy seasons, resulting in a dataset of over 100,000 entries for 46 unprocessed food commodities. The data collected includes information on the key types of transportation used, and quantity, source, and destination of the food flows. The data were used to delineate urban foodsheds and to identify city-specific factors constraining rural-urban linkages. They can be used to inform academic and policy discussions on urban food system sustainability, to validate other datasets, and to plan humanitarian aid and food security interventions. Workflow and supplementary information associated with this dataset are found on GitHub (https://zenodo.org/record/7813686#.ZDQmKvbP23A). The data paper provides information on how data were collected and processed as well as how to use the data (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-023-02163-6): Karg, H., Akoto-Danso, E.K., Amprako, L. et al. A spatio-temporal dataset on food flows for four West African cities. Sci Data 10, 263 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02163-6