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Pigs have played a major role in the economic, social and symbolic systems of China since the Early Neolithic more than 8,000 years ago. However, the interaction between the history of pig domestication and transformations in Chinese society since then, have not been fully explored. In this paper, we investigated the co-evolution from the earliest farming communities through to the new political and economic models of state-like societies, up to the Chinese Empire, using 5,000 years of archaeological records from the Xiawanggang (XWG) and Xinzhai (XZ) sites (Henan Province). To trace the changes of pig populations against husbandry practices, we combined the geometric morphometric analysis of dental traits with a study of the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios from bone collagen. The domestication process intensified during the Neolithic Yangshao, prompted by greater selective pressure and/or better herd control against wild introgression. After that, pig farming, in XWG, relied on local livestock and a gradual change of husbandry practices overtime. This was characterized by a gentle increase in millet foddering and animal protein intake, until a complete change over to household management during the Han dynasty. The only rupture in this steady trend of husbandry occurred during the Longshan period, with the appearance of small sized and idiosyncratic pigs with specific feeding practices (relying on millet and household scraps). From three exploratory hypothesis, we explored the possibility of anti-elite pig production in XWG during the Longshan period, as a means to resist incorporation into a new economic model promoting intensified domestic production. This exploratory hypothesis is the most suitable to our dataset; however, numerous areas need to be explored further in order to adequately document the role of pigs in the rise of China’s complex societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bottom trawling is one of the most efficient fishing activities, but serious and persistent ecological issues have been observed by fishers, scientists and fishery managers. Although China has applied the Beidou fishing vessel position monitoring system (VMS) to manage trawlers since 2006, little is known regarding the impacts of trawling on the sea bottom environments. In this study, continuous VMS data of the 1403 single-rig otter trawlers registered in the Xiangshan Port, 3.9% of the total trawlers in China, were used to map the trawling effort in 2013. We used the accumulated distance (AD), accumulated power distance (APD), and trawling intensity as indexes to express the trawling efforts in the Yellow Sea (YS) and East China Sea (ECS). Our results show that all three indexes had similar patterns in the YS and ECS, and indicated a higher fishing effort of fishing grounds that were near the port. On average, the seabed was trawled 0.73 times in 2013 over the entire fishing region, and 51.38% of the total fishing grounds were with no fishing activities. Because of VMS data from only a small proportion of Chinese trawlers was calculated fishing intensity, more VMS data is required to illustrate the overall trawling effort in China seas. Our results enable fishery managers to identify the distribution of bottom trawling activities in the YS and ECS, and hence to make effective fishery policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aphis gossypii Glover (Hemiptera: Aphididae) is a serious pest of cotton in northern China. A microsatellite analysis was used to characterize the genetic structure of A. gossypii populations from different geographic, host plant, and seasonal populations in 2014. Among 906 individuals, 507 multilocus genotypes were identified, with genotypic richness values of 0.07–1.00 for the populations. We observed moderate levels of genetic differentiation among geographic populations (FST = 0.103; 95% confidence interval: 0.065–0.145) and host plant populations (FST = 0.237; 95% confidence interval: 0.187–0.296). A Mantel test of isolation by distance revealed no significant correlations between Slatkin’s linearized FST and the natural logarithm of geographic distance. A Bayesian analysis of population genetic structures identified three clusters. An analysis of molecular variance revealed significant differences among the three clusters (F = 0.26596, P < 0.0001), among seasons (F = 0.04244, P = 0.00381), and among host populations (F = 0.12975, P = 0.0029). Thus, the A. gossypii populations in northern China exhibit considerable genotypic diversity. Additionally, our findings indicated that the 31 analyzed populations could be classified as one of three host biotypes (i.e., cotton, cucumber, and pomegranate biotypes). There were also clear seasonal effects on population genetic structure diversity among aphids collected from Anyang. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]