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Article Reference Historical management of equine resources in France from the Iron Age to the Modern Period
Alongside horses, donkeys and their first-generation hybrids represent members of the Equidae family known for their social, economic and symbolic importance in protohistoric and historical France. However, their relative importance and their respective roles in different regions and time periods are difficult to assess based on textual, iconographic and archaeological evidence. This is both due to incomplete, partial and scattered historical sources and difficulties to accurately assign fragmentary archaeological remains at the proper taxonomic level. DNA- based methods, however, allow for a robust identification of the taxonomic status of ancient equine osseous material from minimal sequence data. Here, we leveraged shallow ancient DNA sequencing and the dedicated Zonkey computational pipeline to obtain the first baseline distribution for horses, mules and donkeys in France from the Iron Age to the Modern period. Our collection includes a total of 873 ancient specimens spanning 128 ubiquitous and the most dominant species identified, our dataset reveals the importance of mule breeding during Roman times, especially between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE (Common Era), where they represented between 20.0% and 34.2% of equine assemblages. In contrast, donkeys were almost absent from northern France as-semblages during the whole Roman period, but replaced mules in rural and urban commercial and economic centers from the early Middle Ages. Our work also identified donkeys of exceptional size during Late Antiquity, which calls for a deep reassessment of the true morphological space of past equine species. This study confirmed the general preference toward horses throughout all time periods investigated but revealed dynamic manage-ment strategies leveraging the whole breadth of equine resources in various social, geographic and temporal contexts.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2021
Article Reference Sex in the city: uncovering sex-specific management of equine resources from prehistoric times to the modern period in France
Sex identification from fragmentary archeozoological assemblages is particularly challenging in the Equid family, including for horses, donkeys and their hybrids. This limitation has precluded in-depth investigations of sex-ratio variation in various temporal, geographic and social contexts. Recently, shallow DNA sequencing has offered an economical solution to equine sex determination, even in environments where DNA preservation conditions is not optimal. In this study, we applied state-of-the-art methods in ancient DNA-based equine sex determination to 897 osseous remains in order to assess whether equal proportions of males and females could be found in a range of archeological contexts in France. We found Magdalenian horse hunt not focused on isolated bachelors, and Upper Paleolithic habitats and natural traps equally balancing sex ratios. In contrast, Iron Age sacrificial rituals appeared to have been preferentially oriented to male horses and this practice extended into the Roman Period. During Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Modern Period, cities emerged as environments largely dominated by horse males. This strong sex-bias was considerably reduced, and sometimes even absent, in various rural contexts. Combined with previous archaeozoological work and textual evidence, our results portray an urban economy fueled by adult, often old, males, and rural environments where females and subadults of both sexes were maintained to sustain production demands.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022
Preprint Reference Somewhere I belong: phylogeny and morphological evolution in a species-rich lineage of ectoparasitic flatworms infecting cichlid fishes
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2021 OA
Article Reference Diving into the unknown: fourteen new species of haplosclerid sponges (Demospongiae: Haplosclerida) revealed along the Peruvian coast (Southeastern Pacific)
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022
Techreport Reference Human impacts on ecosystem health and resources of Lake Edward
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2021 OA
Article Reference African lates perches (Teleostei, Latidae, Lates): Paraphyly of Nile perch and recent colonization of Lake Tanganyika
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2021
Article Reference Molecular Identification of an Invasive Sarotherodon Species from the Atchakpa Freshwater Reservoir (Ouémé River Basin, Benin) and Comparison within S. melanotheron Using COI Markers
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2021 OA
Article Reference Tidally Driven Dispersion of a Deep-Sea Sediment Plume Originating from Seafloor Disturbance in the DISCOL Area (SE-Pacific Ocean)
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022
Article Reference First record of a Lessepsian migrant: the sea cucumber Holothuria (Theelothuria) hamata Pearson, 1913
First record of a Lessepsian migrant: the sea cucumber Holothuria (Theelothuria) hamata Pearson, 1913. A single specimen of the Indo-West Pacific sea cucumber Holothuria (Theelothuria) hamata Pearson, 1913 has been captured in 2017 in the Mediterranean Sea, Turkey, Iskenderun Bay, at 30 m depth. This specimen is here described, and the taxonomy of the species is briefly discussed. Despite the lack of timed biogeographic evidence, we here argue that H. hamata is a Lessepsian migrant; the first in its genus and only the second holothuroid.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2019
Book Reference Field guide to the brittle and basket stars (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea) of South Africa
Brittle and basket stars (ophiuroids) are one of five extant classes of the phylum Echinodermata and have a fossil record dating back almost 500 million years to the Early Ordovician. Today, they remain diverse and widespread, with over 260 described genera and 2,077 extant species globally (Stöhr et al. 2018), more than any other class of echinoderm. Ophiuroid species are found across all marine habitats from the intertidal shore to the abyss. In southern Africa, the ophiuroid fauna has been studied extensively by a number of authors and is relatively wellknown. The last published review of the southern African Ophiuroidea however was by Clark & Courtman-Stock in 1976. It included 101 species reported from within the boundaries of South Africa. In the 40 years since that publication the number of species has risen to 136. This identification guide includes a taxonomic key to all 136 species, and gives key references, istribution maps, diagnoses, scaled photographs (where possible), and a synthesis of known ecological and depth information for each. The guide is designed to be comprehensive, well illustrated and easy to use for both naturalists and professional biologists. Taxonomic terms, morphological characteristics and technical expressions are defined and described in detail, with illustrations to clarify some aspects of the terminology. A checklist of all species in the region is also included, and indicates which species are endemic (33), for which we report significant range extensions (23), which have been recorded as new to the South African fauna (28) since the previous monograph of Clark & Courtman-Stock (1976) and which have undergone taxonomic revisions since that time (28).
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2019