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The insectivorous bat Myotis lucifugus typically apportions the night into two foraging periods separated by an interval of night roosting. During this interval, many bats occupy roosts that are used exclusively at night and are spatially separate from maternity roosts. The proportion of the night which bats spend roosting, and thus the proportion spent foraging, vary both daily and seasonally in relation to the reproductive condition of the bats, prey density, and ambient temperature. A single, continuous night roosting period is observed during pregnancy. During lactation, females return to maternity roosts between foraging bouts, and night roosts are used only briefly and sporadically. Maximum use of night roosts occurs in late summer after young become volant. Superimposed upon these seasonal trends is day-to-day variation in the bats' nightly time budget. Long night roosting periods and short foraging periods are associated with cool nights and low prey density. This behavioral response may minimize energetic losses during periods of food scarcity.

This chapter looks at home front feminist discourse, particularly the language circulating around food scarcity in Sylvia Pankhurst’s paper the Woman’s Dreadnought and in the Pethick Lawrence paper Votes for Women, in order to uncover efforts to reimagine the everyday during wartime. Though an exploration of explicitly feminist interrogations of a domestic sphere ravaged by food scarcity, its privacy shattered by governmental inspection and regulation, this chapter shows how feminist journalists used documentary forms such as interviews, budgets, and recipes, to register the details of that experience.

Nettle et al. evaluate evidence for the insurance hypothesis, which links obesity with the perception of food scarcity. Epidemiological findings in this area have generally been weak and inconsistent. The present commentary examines three key methodological issues arising from the literature on the association between obesity and the perception of food scarcity in humans, with suggestions for future epidemiological research.

Body image distortions are common in healthy individuals and a central aspect of serious clinical conditions, such as eating disorders. This commentary explores the potential implications of body image and its distortions for the insurance hypothesis. In particular, we speculate that body image may be an intervening variable mediating the relationship between perceived food scarcity and eating behavior.

The Middle East has 10 percent of the planet's land and 5 percent of its population, but it contains less than 1 percent of the world's freshwater resources. Thirteen of the twenty-two members of the Arab League rank among the world's most water-scarce nations. The effects of climate change, water shortages, and resulting migrations of people could result in an acute problem of food scarcity across the region. As outbreaks of the Arab Spring showed, a shortfall of food and a rise in the prices of staple items can have a devastating impact on the stability of the entire region. The history of humankind is replete with instances of savage conflict; however, there are also numerous instances when people have cooperated with each other to achieve tasks of expansive scope. The essay describes both the dire state of water resources in the region and avenues for using water for regional cooperation.

The research aims to map and analyze food scarcity or surplus based on the food availability at migrant area in Wonogiri, Central Java. The rapid rural assessment and focus group discussion were used for detecting and exploring any food plant that is good and appropriate to the characteristics of migrant area. The condition of food availability in the Wonogiri regency could be stated to be surplus. The highest surplus was located in Giriwono sub-district and the lowest surplus in Bulukerto sub-district. Most of the sub-districts in Wonogiri subdistricts reached an IFI score < 0.5 (index of composite food security) in whichit could represent a secure condition.

This article illustrates the ways communities maintain and adjust the boundaries of local cuisine as food systems change. Focusing on contemporary Cuban household cooking practices, I reveal the importance of cookbooks and television in helping household cooks adjust to food system changes. Through her cookbooks and television show, Nitza Villapol, a famous Cuban chef, played a significant role in demonstrating how to cook with a drastically restricted set of ingredients during and after the economic crisis of the 1990s. Her work aided Cubans in making adaptations without completely changing the local cuisine. This article outlines the scope of Villapol's work, the relationship between her work and the Cuban state, and how Cubans remember her role in the 1990s and use her work today. I argue that Nitza Villapol's work was crucial in helping Cuban household cooks learn to use available ingredients to create dishes that call for now scarce ingredients.

Rising temperatures and decreasing water transparency of lakes have strong wide ranging effects on fish. Fish responses to various changes in the environment are usually species-dependent, but responses may also vary within species. In general, large individuals are considered to be more sensitive to environmental variation due to higher energy demand, than smaller individuals. Similarly, large individuals require more food to maintain bodily functions and are thus more sensitive to resource and food scarcity. These size-specific responses to environmental gradients are also sex-dependent in species that exhibit sexual size dimorphism (SSD). We studied in enclosures with short-term experiments how rising temperatures and decreasing water transparency regulate the feeding rates of female and male European perch (Perca fluviatilis L.). To explore experimental results, we calculated perch SSD in nine lakes with varying environmental conditions using previously collected field data. The results of the experiments revealed that the combined effect of water transparency and temperature on the feeding rate of fish is gender-dependent: feeding rate of females decreased more than that of males. The experimental results were also supported by field data that revealed a negative relation between water transparency and the magnitude of SSD in perch. Our results suggest that rising temperatures and decreasing water transparency may potentially decrease fish size in a sex-dependent manner. As female size is one of the main demographic traits determining the reproductive success of a fish population, changing environments may have unexpected and far-reaching consequences on fish population dynamics.

The world population is exploding and is estimated to reach 9.8 billion within the next 10 years (Gerland et al. 2014). Desire for more convenient lifestyles is not likely to be satisfied (United Nations 2009). Such lifestyles entail the unsustainable exploitation of water resources and the environment (Vitousek et al. 1997). Advanced technology and transportation systems have enabled the transfer of goods across the world and, eventually, also the water that is used to produce them. This means that luxurious lifestyles on one side of the planet can cause water and food scarcity on the other side (Hoekstra & Mekonnen 2012). We are also witnessing drastic global climate change: sea levels are rising, and droughts and floods have become more intense. These have exacerbated the global water and food crises (Vorosmarty et al. 2000; Hanjra & Qureshi 2010). Our generation's water challenge is no longer a local or isolated issue. It must be recognized, understood, and analyzed from a holistic and global perspective (Wagener et al. 2010). As such, the growing complexity of global water challenges requires better collection and analysis of ever increasing data with equipping …

Amaranthaceae, a common family of flowering plants distributed worldwide, also shows its presence in Jharkhand. Jharkhand have some of the species which are wild growing and are considered as weeds. The people of Munda tribe have a rich traditional knowledge of utilizing these weeds as edibles and for medicines. This paper deals with the study and documentation traditional knowledge of Mundas, which resulted in documentation of seven wild growing underutilized Amaranthaceae species. This type of documentation work is very important in the present century where the natural resources and their related knowledge are depleting due to unawareness about their importance and utilities.

Cassava is emerging as a dominant staple food, primarily in the humid and sub-humid tropics of many African countries. It has high nutritional value and used by people where food scarcity is adverse and people are afflicted with under nutrition. Cassava roots and leaves are used as sources of carbohydrate, protein, vitamins and minerals. Cassava also contains some anti-nutrients that have an effect on human health when ingested in high amount. But, proper cooking and soaking overnight can detoxify the anti-nutrients before using for nutrition purposes. Bio-fortification, which increases protein, mineral and vitamin contents of cassava, is also utilized to minimize the anti-nutrient and carcinogenic content of the plant. The protein content of cassava could be improved by fortifying its powder with other crops with high protein content.

The indiscriminate application of synthetic chemicals in agriculture has deteriorated extremely the quality of environment due to loss of beneficial microbial communities. The world now has a real prospect to grow sustainably and eliminate acute food scarcity in the next generation. Achieving this will require eco-friendly and safe technology for restoration of degraded lands. Microbes form the vital living components of soils contributing ecosystem sustainability due to their cosmopolitan survival, massive efficient genetic pool, catabolic versatility and stress tolerance potential. It has been reported that direct application of modified microbes enhances the microbial diversity in the agro-ecosystems by breaking dormancy of inactive soil microbial pool. It is presumed that enhanced diversity of efficient microbial community compositions in degraded ecosystems establish a functional equilibrium, which help maintain sustainability. Undoubtedly therefore, microbes may play the role of chief ecological engineers in resolving the environmental problems as well as the innovative tool to reinstate the degraded ecosystems.

Household food insecurity has been previously hypothesized to promote dependence on inexpensive, highly palatable foods that are energy dense. Such dependence, and the cyclical nature of having enough food in the beginning of the month followed by food scarcity at the end of the month, could lead to weight gain over a short period of time. Such dependence on energy-dense foods and weight gain may play a direct role in the development of chronic conditions. Other compounding factors that result from exposure to household food insecurity have been well described, including pathways by which stress promotes visceral fat accumulation and chronic disease. This symposium review paper summarizes the literature on the link between food insecurity and the following: 1) diet, 2) weight gain, and 3) chronic disease, especially among women. This paper also proposes a framework for considering how the lived experience of household food insecurity may potentiate the development of chronic disease by activating the stress response among individuals at critical developmental periods in a food-impoverished environment.

Violent conflicts were more prevalent in historical Europe during colder periods, causedby food scarcity. Up to now, however, cold periods have not been attributed to planetary-scale atmo -spheric circulation, and thus no relationship between circulation and violence in Europe has beenestablished. In this study, we took an innovative step in exploring the association between the NAOand violent conflicts in Europe in 1400−1995. Our results show that the NAO was positively cor -related with violent conflicts, particularly in southern Europe and the Mediterranean—the region inwhich an NAO-induced desiccation effect is experienced. Results hold up even with different meas-ures of violent conflict. Nevertheless, the NAO-conflict correlation has weakened since the IndustrialRevolution. Our result is the first demonstration that the NAO affected social stability in pre-industrial societies. This knowledge is crucial in examining violent conflicts in northwestern Africa,a region affected by the NAO, as well as being highly agricultural.KEY WORDS: Climate change · NAO · Violent conflicts · Europe

The subterranean parts of many wild plants form an important constituent of traditional diet of the tribal inhabitants of Similipal Biosphere Reserve, Odisha especially in times of food scarcity during critical periods. However, no specific study has been made so far on this aspect. The present study was conducted during 2008–2012 as a search for sources of food and to assess the dietary diversity, consumption pattern, culinary uses and prioritized species of wild tuberous plants sustained by local tribes. The exploration and germplasm collection missions along with intensive botanical survey, focus group discussions, structured household interview and market survey were conducted in 30 villages interacting with 102 key informants of core and buffer zones. A total of 55 wild edible tuberous species representing 37 genera and 24 families were inventoried including 17 species used during food deficiency to meet seasonal shortages. The analyzed data contributed 5 use categories, 4 preparation methods, 7 kinds of food items, 10 species as children snacks, 35 species of pharma-foods and 20 prioritized species. Ten species were domesticated by tribes thus reducing threats on wild tubers and 20 species were traded in local markets to generate additional income exemplifying economic benefits from wild tubers. Seventeen species were identified as novel uses of food items from India. The findings suggested that the nutritional profile along with pharmaceutical attributes of preferred wild food plants be analyzed for recommending suitable species for better nutrition and development of nutraceuticals. Further, many genetic resources of these wild tuberous species of agri-horticultural importance constitute the wild genepool hence their economic and breeding potential along with desirable attributes need to be investigated for utilization in crop improvement programmes.

Food security as a concept attracts the attention of policy makers, practitioners, and academics around the world (Jones et al. 2013), as it is considered one of the key essentials of life (Pfeiffer et al. 2015), since it is related to individual well-being (Magana-Lemus and Lara-Alvarez 2015) and because food scarcity or food insecurity can affect almost every facet of society (Jones et al. 2013). A household (microlevel) is considered food-secure when it has the ability to acquire the food needed by its members (Pinstrup-Andersen 2009). Timmer (2012) asserts that understanding the behavioral dimensions of food security is an important step in learning how to prevent food crises.

Continuous practice of old methods in agriculture cannot reduce the food scarcity, as the over use of chemicals, drought and infertile soil are a severe issues where the investment is more and the yielding is less, these all due to unpredictable climatic changes and uncontrolled pesticides. To overcome these issues scientist have concentrated on the new technology by combining the specific genes in-vivo for the crops which is called transgenic crops/plants.

Opuntia (prickly pear) is a genus of xerophytes belonging to the Cactaceae family, growing luxuriantly in the arid parts of the world. Recently, the pears of Opuntia have been discovered to contain a plethora of biologically active compounds. Owing to their high nutritional value, in terms of dietary fiber, polyunsaturated fatty acid-rich oil, minerals, protein, and an assortment of other phytochemicals, the pears are gaining popularity as exotic, gourmet diet. Multiple health benefits viz. antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antidiuretic, hypocholesterolemic, antidiabetic, antiproliferation, immunostimulatory and antiulcerogenic activity have emerged. The review summarizes the nutraceutical aspects of the pears and the possible strategies to minimize their postharvest loss. Rich in functional ingredients, these pears are expected to revolutionize the processed foods industry and solve food scarcity in developing countries. However, no significant attempt has yet been made to benefit from this potential nutritive storehouse. This review is prepared with a vision to bolster its status as a viable food and drug supplement.

This essay considers Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) as intervening in the ongoing debate between Thomas Malthus and William Godwin. Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) in large part as a response to Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) and “Of Avarice and Profusion” (1797); Godwin later wrote an extended refutation of Malthus in Of Population (1820). Mary Shelley uses The Last Man, a story of the end of the human species, in part as a meditation on the merits of Malthus's philosophical positions in the Essay on the Principle of Population, but she seems to disagree with a number of the mechanisms he identifies: in contrast to Malthus, Shelley identifies a blind and random nature rather than any divine plan as controlling population change, and disease rather than food scarcity as the primary cause of population reduction, but insists upon the importance of individuating and empathizing with the suffering.

Immigrants typically express cravings for the food of their homeland, but for undocumented and temporarily documented Salvadoran immigrants living in the United States, the hunger for their traditional cuisine is particularly poignant. To cope with a history of food scarcity in El Salvador and their documentation liminality in the United States, Salvadoran immigrants in this study crave symbolically rich foods. Salvadoran women provide these foods by recreating for their families an ideal Salvadoran meal into which they "groom" meanings of an imagined past and a hoped for present and future. Salvadoran immigrants' cravings, more cultural than physiological, are not readily satisfied, thus contributing to the overconsumption of food and the high rate of overweight among first-generation Salvadoran-American children.

The extreme sensory environment of subterranean caves presents an adaptive challenge for troglobitic organisms. Although caves provide distinct selective pressures (e.g., darkness, food scarcity), advantages often come with living in isolated places. The cave-adapted (hypogean) form of the teleost Astyanax mexicanus lacks predators in its natural environment, unlike its ancestral surface (epigean) form that inhabits the nearby rivers. This species provides a unique opportunity for comparative studies because A. mexicanus has invaded the cave environment multiple times, providing us with independent comparative adaptive experiments. Here, we examine kinematic parameters that characterize the escape responses of various forms of A. mexicanus. We demonstrate that populations differ in details of fast start performance, but that surface fish do not perform better than cavefish in escape responses. Our results are more consistent with genetic drift or divergent selection among caves than with relaxation of selection in determining the evolution of escape behavior in this system.

Objective: To determine whether food scarcity or economic constraint is more strongly associated with purchasing patterns in a rural Aboriginal community. Design: Store receipts were collected to determine money spent in the community shop across a four-month period from January to April 2006. Variability in expenditures is then studied using measures of food scarcity (days since shop loading) and economic constraint (days since payday). Setting: Parnngurr Outstation in the Western Desert of Australia. Main outcome measures: Daily gross and per-household gross expenditures at the community shop. Results: There is a significant association between food scarcity and money spent in the shop (−42.89, confidence interval −62.62 to −23.18, P

In this paper, we analyze predictions from the energetic bottleneck and opportunity models to explain the use of stones to crack open encased fruit by capuchins in dry environments. The energetic bottleneck model argues that tool use derives from the need to crack open hard-encased fruits which are key resources during periods of food scarcity. The opportunity model argues that tool use by capuchins derives from simultaneous access to stones and encased fruits. The study was conducted in the Caatinga biome, northeastern Brazil, at two areas where capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus and Sapajus spp.) regularly use stones to crack open encased fruit of Syagrus cearensis and Manihot dichotoma. Energetic gains were inferred based on the number of tool-use sites used and the mass of encased fruit consumed per month, and compared across seasons and areas occupied by the two groups. For the drier habitat, a significant increase in frequency of tool use (Ndry = 329 vs. Nwet = 59) and in the mean monthly mass of fruits consumed in the dry season (meandry = 193g vs. meanwet = 13.5 g) offered support for the energetic bottleneck model. However, our inference of low energetic payoffs for tool using individuals (in the drier caatinga habitat from 13 to 193 cal·ind−1·month−1 and in the wetter caatinga habitat from 805 to 1150 cal·ind−1·month−1) offer support for the opportunity model. Finally, our analyses indicate that consumption of six S. cearensis fruits would equal the daily requirements of capuchins for β-carotene, and the consumption of 1.22 g·day−1 of M. dichotoma encased fruit or 1.0 g·day−1 of S. cearensis can supply capuchin's daily requirement of vitamin C. So, specific nutritional requirements may play a role in explaining the continuous consumption of encased fruit and customary use of stones to crack open encased fruit. Am. J. Primatol. 74:332–343, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This paper examines the livelihood challenges experienced in Rwanjaba Lakeshore Community during the period of low water level in Lake Victoria between 2004 and 2007 and identifies the livelihood coping strategies that were adopted to address them. A total of 55 households were randomly sampled and the data collection methods included household questionnaires and participant observations. The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and the results presented with the help of descriptive statistics. The livelihood challenges experienced during the low lake water level included fish shortage (34.5%), household food scarcity (23.6%), sex for fish (18.2%), family breakdown (12.7%), increased theft (7.2%) and accidents due to the exposed rocks in the lake (3.6%). The livelihood coping strategies adopted to redress the challenges included cainternatl labour (32.7%), maize roasting (23.6%), sand mining (18.2%), selling of snacks (12.7%), selling household property (9.1%...

A broad and growing literature suggests that uncertainty with respect to income, employment, and/or the financial resources necessary to buy food may cause people to gain weight. The theory—inspired by theory and evidence from behavioral ecology—posits that economic insecurity triggers a physiological fattening response, but the mechanisms by which weight gain occurs (e.g., physical activity, caloric intake, dietary quality, basal metabolism, depression) are not known. This paper reviews and synthesizes evidence supporting a dietary quality mechanism, in which economic insecurity triggers a shift in food preferences toward “fattening” foods. Interestingly, the foods to which individuals appear to be drawn under these circumstances are those which the anthropological evidence suggests would have been eaten (in pre-industrial societies) during periods of seasonal food scarcity(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

One epigean and five cave populations of Astyanax fasciatus were compared with respect to egg and embryo size as well as yolk volume 12 h and 24 h after fertilization. All cave fish have significantly bigger eggs and embryos with more yolk than the epigean ancestor. There are no differences in the chemical composition of cave and surface fish eggs. The genetic analysis of yolk content reveals an additive polygenic mode of inheritance. Zusammenfassung Dotterreichere Eier bei unterirdisch lebenden Astyanax fasciatus (Characidae, Pisces) Eine oberirdische und funf unterirdische Populationen von Astyanax fasciatus wurden in Hinsicht auf Ei- und Embryogrose und auf Dottervolumen 12 h und 24 h nach der Befruchtung unter-sucht. Alle Hohlenfische haben signifikant grosere Eier und Embryonen mit mehr Dotter als der oberirdische Verwandte. Dagegen bestehen keine Unterschiede in der chemischen Zusammenset-zung der Eier ober- und unterirdischer Fische. Die genetische Analyse zeigt, das das Dottervolumen additiv polygen vererbt wird.

SUMMARY The results of a three-year study of the diet of Quelea quelea in the Lake Chad region of Nigeria indicate why this bird periodically does extensive damage to crops of dry-season guinea-corn. The normal food of the birds in the early dry-season consists of small grass seeds collected off the ground. As the supply of these diminishes there is a gradual change-over to larger seeds. In years when this change begins early, it is liable to coincide with the ripening of the cereal crop and severe damage may be caused. At the beginning of the rains the dry-season food supply is lost owing to the simultaneous germination of the seeds over large areas. The birds lay down fat reserves in preparation for this lean period. After a short time the birds migrate south to regions where rain has been falling for some weeks. In the short period spent in these parts, Queleas feed on ripening grass seeds—including those of cultivated millet. There is evidence for considerable mortality during this time of food scarcity and it is suggested that the numbers of Queleas are limited by the food supply. The significance of communal roosting is discussed. It is proposed that the phenomenon is related to food finding, the roost being considered as an “information centre” for the large area prospected by the birds constituting the roosting community. A method is outlined by which information on food availability within the feeding area may feasibly be transmitted within the community.

Although it appeared relatively suddenly, the current obesity epidemic - largely manifest in industrialized societies but now spreading to the rest of the world - is the result of interaction between human biology and human culture over the long period of human evolution. As mammals and primates, humans have the capacity to store body fat when opportunities to consume excess energy arise. But during the millions of years of human evolution such opportunities were rare and transient. More commonly ancestral hominins and modern humans were confronted with food scarcity and had to engage in high levels of physical activity. In tandem with encephalization, humans evolved elaborate and complex genetic and physiological systems to protect against starvation and defend stored body fat. They also devised technological aids for increasing energy consumption and reducing physical effort. In the last century, industrialization provided access to great quantities of mass-produced, high-calorie foods and many labour-saving and transportation devices, virtually abolishing starvation and heavy manual work. In the modern obesogenic environment, individuals possessing the appropriate combination of ancestral energy-conserving genes are at greater risk for overweight and obesity and associated chronic diseases.

This paper is about ‘material politics’. It argues that this may be understood as a material ordering of the world in a way that contrasts this with other and equally possible alternative modes of ordering. It also suggests that while material politics may well involve words, it is not discursive in kind. This argument is made for the mundane and material practice of boiling pigswill that the 2001 UK foot and mouth outbreak showed to have a layered importance. Boiling pigswill was a political technique in at least three different ways. First it made difference, dividing the rich from the poor by separating disease free countries from those in which foot and mouth is endemic. Second, it joined times and places by linking past agricultural practices with those of the contemporary world, and linking Britain with the world. And third, it also showed a way of limiting food scarcity on a world wide scale because it allowed food to be recycled, albeit on a small scale, in a region of plenty. ‘Politics’ is often linked to debate, discussion, or explicit contestation. Alternatively, it is sometimes seen as being embedded in and carried by artefacts. For the case of boiling pigswill neither approach is satisfactory. The first privileges the life of the mind while in the second politics is linked too strongly to a single order. The version of politics presented here foregrounds both materiality and difference. And it involves articulation: the question is not whether something is political all by itself but whether it can be called political as part of the process of analysing it.

Young birds often face poor food supply, which reduces their growth and development. However, if the shortage of resources is only temporary, there is a possibility to adjust the growth trajectory of morphological traits after the end of the short-term limitation period. The two main ways of compensatory growth are delayed development (parallel growth) and growth acceleration (catch-up growth). Parallel growth has been widely demonstrated in birds, but the presence of catch-up growth in altricial species has been questioned. However, most experiments have been conducted in laboratory conditions. We manipulated the food supply of nestling collared flycatchers Ficedula albicollis in the wild by removing the male parent for three days at 4 � 7 days of chick age. We performed early partial swapping to control for origin effects on growth, and total swapping after the period of food limitation to ensure similar late growth environment for deprived and control chicks. Both body mass and tarsus length of deprived chicks was negatively affected by the food scarcity. Body mass showed efficient catch-up growth, but this compensation was absent in skeletal size. Body mass is an important determinant of postfledging survival in this long-distance migrant. Further studies are needed in a variety of species to examine developmental plasticity in relation to age at food scarcity and the allocation hierarchy of various morphological traits.

This article argues that social science can be conducted beneath the umbrella of natural science and evolutionary theory. Evolutionary social science makes four key causal assumptions: (a) that modern societies owe their character to an interaction of hunter—gatherer adaptations with the modern environment, (b) that some changes in societies reflect change in individuals, (c) that historical changes and cross-societal differences can be due to similar adaptational mechanisms, given (d) that different social contexts (e.g., food scarcity, single parenthood) modify psychological development through adaptive mechanisms. This approach is illustrated by cross-national data on violent crime and single parenthood.

Persea americana Mill., avocado, is a popular traditional fruit food that is consumed during food scarcity in Southwestern Nigeria. The plant of P. americana have several therapeutic effects including analgesic, anti-inflammatory and hypotensive effects. The essential oil obtained by hydrodistillation from the leaf of the plant was analyzed by gas Chromatography (GC) and gas Chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). β-Caryophyllene (43.9%) and valencene (16.0%) are the most abundant compounds in the oil. Other quantitatively significant constituents are germacrene D (5.9%),ot-humulene (5.0%) and δ-cadinene (4.8%).

Lactose intolerance is an inability to digest milk sugar, characterized by abdominal cramps, nausea, and diarrhea after ingesting milk products. It develops in adolescence or adulthood among those whose bodies naturally stop producing the lactose-digesting enzyme lactase after childhood. Although uncommon in the United States, lactose intolerance actually occurs in the majority of people around the world. The ability to continue producing lactase, and thus to digest milk products, is a relatively recent evolutionary development. After presentation of an illustrative clinical example, the biology of lactase production and lactose intolerance is reviewed. The "culture-historical" hypothesis of Simoons in the 1970's held that persistent lactase production developed in a dairy herding population in Northern Europe during a time of food scarcity, when the ability to digest milk would have provided a survival advantage. Simoons demonstrated that low prevalence of lactose intolerance was associated with pastoral practices among early populations around the world. Hirschhorn recently provided strong genetic evidence for the culture-historical hypothesis using contemporary techniques of genomics and single nucleotide polymorphisms. His research group found that European derived persistent lactase production is due to a mutation near the lactase gene that occurred only about 10 million years ago and rapidly increased in prevalence.

Endogenous daily (circadian) rhythms allow organisms to anticipate daily changes in the environment. Most mammals are specialized to be active during the night (nocturnal) or day (diurnal). However, typically nocturnal mammals become diurnal when energetically challenged by cold or hunger. The circadian thermo-energetics (CTE) hypothesis predicts that diurnal activity patterns reduce daily energy expenditure (DEE) compared with nocturnal activity patterns. Here, we tested the CTE hypothesis by quantifying the energetic consequences of relevant environmental factors in mice. Under natural conditions, diurnality reduces DEE by 6–10% in energetically challenged mice. Combined with night-time torpor, as observed in mice under prolonged food scarcity, DEE can be reduced by ∼20%. The dominant factor determining the energetic benefit of diurnality is thermal buffering provided by a sheltered resting location. Compared with nocturnal animals, diurnal animals encounter higher ambient temperatures during both day and night, leading to reduced thermogenesis costs in temperate climates. Analysis of weather station data shows that diurnality is energetically beneficial on almost all days of the year in a temperate climate region. Furthermore, diurnality provides energetic benefits at all investigated geographical locations on European longitudinal and latitudinal transects. The reduction of DEE by diurnality provides an ultimate explanation for temporal niche switching observed in typically nocturnal small mammals under energetically challenging conditions. Diurnality allows mammals to compensate for reductions in food availability and temperature as it reduces energetic needs. The optimal circadian organization of an animal ultimately depends on the balance between energetic consequences and other fitness consequences of the selected temporal niche.

Acute poisoning caused by plant is not uncommon in Bangladesh. Intentional or accidental plant poisoning sometimes results in morbidity and significant death. People have been traditionally usingmedicinal plant from the very early period of civilization, and this practice is still continued in a well-established manner, especially for the treatment of some chronic non-curable disease; medicinal plants are considered nontoxic by the general public due to their natural origin. The mixture of different plants and herbs made by a traditional healer and their canvassing on the street magnetize a wide range of people. The easy low-cost availability and the consumption of unknown and inappropriate mixture of mysterious medicinal plants sometime cause hepatic and renal toxicity, even deaths which are mostly unreported. Inadvertent deaths do occur in children in Bangladesh due to plant poisoning. Food scarcity during a disaster also drives poor people to deviate their usual consumption practices and take immature or nonprocess plants which are occasionally fatal. Plant poisoning for suicidal attempt is now declining mostly due to the availability of other easy method like agrochemical and pharmaceutical drug. Suicidal attempt by yellow oleander is infrequently reported in different hospitals. In Bangladesh, once Datura plant seeds were popularly used by miscreants as a stufying agent offered through different food items to a bystander to make them stupor in order to rob the capital. A separate group of poisonings with significant mortality and morbidity occurs after women use plants to induce abortions. Treatment for most plant poisoning is symptomatic, and specific antidotes are used in only a very few cases.

Recent changes in the institutional framework of food safety in Portugal have been initiated by BSE scandals and by EU legislative impact. Portuguese consumers have only recently moved from a poverty-related fear of food scarcity to modern fears of safety-related problems with food. Food safety is now highly politicized in Portugal, and the organization of food safety policies has been the topic of several parliamentary debates and of governmental reform. The chapter describes the political conflicts generated by the planned establishment of a new Food Agency-controversies which have so far hindered institutional change.

Summary 1 Energy management has been studied in migrators and hibernators but little is know about energy management in cachers. 2 We investigated the energy management behaviour of two species of cachers, Neotoma floridana and Neotoma micropus. We also investigated differences in energy management of these two species that experience different environmental conditions during the period of food scarcity. 3 Results show that both species decrease body mass from autumn to winter and increase mass from winter to spring. Both species decrease body fat from autumn to winter but only N. floridana increases body fat from winter to spring. Plasma protein follows the same pattern as body mass in N. floridana. Plasma lipids decrease from autumn to winter but do not increase from winter to spring. 4 Results indicate that cachers, unlike hibernators or migrators, are able to use the food cache to increase body mass and body fat when new resources are not being produced in the environment. 5 Results suggest that environmental conditions alter resource management and the species that experiences more severe conditions stores more energy as fat.

Food hoarding is the handling of food to conserve it for future use, and food hoarding animals have the capacity to control the availability of food in space and time (Smith & Reichman 1984; Vanderwall 1990). The benefits derived from this control include an improved individual probability of survival during periods of food scarcity, optimized foraging and feeding, improved foraging for limited resources, and provision of a continuous flow of food to offspring during the reproductive season (reviewed by Vanderwall 1990). Interand intra-specific cache pilfering frequently reduces the cache resources of food hoarders, and there is evidence that the impact of cache pilfering can be impressive (Vanderwall & Jenkins 2003). As a consequence, food hoarders have different behavioral strategies to minimize

Projected changes in surface climate are reviewed at a range of temporal scales, with an emphasis on tropical northern Africa—a region considered to be particularly vulnerable to climate change. Noting the key aspects of ‘weather’ affecting crop yield, we then consider relevant and projected change using output from a range of state of the art global climate models (GCMs), and for different future emission scenarios. The outputs from the models reveal significant inter-model variation in the change expected by the end of the twenty-first century for even the lowest IPCC emission scenario. We provide a set of recommendations on future model diagnostics, configurations and ease of use to close further the gap between GCMs and smaller-scale crop models. This has the potential to empower countries to make their own assessments of vulnerability to climate change induced periods of food scarcity.

Several species of birds and primates produce food-associated vocalizations upon finding or consuming food. Tufted capuchin monkeys produce two food-associated vocalizations (the grgr and the food-associated whistle series), which are functionally referential. By experimentally placing new food sources (feeding platforms containing half pieces of banana), I explored the factors that affect the production of food-associated calls in a wild group of tufted capuchins. Finders of these platforms called in 81% of the discoveries when the platform contained fruit (N = 57) but in 0% of cases when the platform was empty (N = 5). Males and females of all ages and dominance ranks gave food-associated calls when discovering a platform with fruit. The probability that a finder gave food-associated vocalizations was lower during the period of food scarcity and when the platform contained a small amount of bananas (three pieces as opposed to ≥ 20 pieces). There was an effect of the audience on the latency to give food-associated calls. The time elapsed until the finder gave the first food-associated call decreased with the presence and density of nearby individuals and increased with the distance from other individuals to the platform. The latency to call was longer for females than for males. The audience effect and the effect of the sex of the finder are consistent with the hypothesis that capuchins use these vocalizations deceptively by withholding information about the presence of a food source. By increasing the latency to call, finders of new food sources can obtain a larger amount of food and thus reduce the costs associated with calling. Fil: Di Bitetti, Mario Santiago. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituto Miguel Lillo. Laboratorio de Investigaciones Ecológicas de las Yungas; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina