Grazing is one of the most widespread forms of intensive management on Earth and is linked to reductions in soil health. However, little is known about the relative influence of herbivore type, herbivore intensity and site productivity on soil health. This lack of knowledge reduces our capacity to manage landscapes where grazing is a major land use. We used structural equation modelling to assess the effects of recent (cattle, sheep, goats, kangaroos and rabbit dung)...

Plant litter breakdown is a key ecological process in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. Streams and rivers, in particular, have high rates of carbon dioxide evasion and they contribute substantially to global carbon fluxes. However, there is little information available on the relative roles of different drivers of plant litter breakdown in fresh waters, particularly at large scales. We present a global-scale study of litter breakdown in streams to compare the roles of biotic, climatic and...

Fires have occurred throughout history, including those associated with the meteoroid impact at the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) boundary that eliminated many vertebrate species. To evaluate the recent hypothesis that the survival of the K-Pg fires by ancestral mammals was dependent on their ability to use energy-conserving torpor, we studied body temperature fluctuations and activity of an egg-laying mammal, the echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), often considered to be a ‘living fossil’, before, during and after a prescribed burn....

Background: Two separate domestication events gave rise to humped zebu cattle in India and humpless taurine cattle in the Fertile Crescent of the Near and Middle East. Iran covers the Eastern side of the Fertile Crescent and exhibits a variety of native cattle breeds, however, only little is known about the admixture patterns of Iranian cattle and their contribution to the formation of modern cattle breeds. Results: Genome-wide data (700k chip) of eight Iranian cattle...