Explore the vast range of titles available.

Previous research indicates that the Ñanchoc Valley in northern Peru was an important locus of early and middle Holocene human settlement, and that between 9200 and 5500 ¹⁴C yr B.P. the valley inhabitants adopted major crop plants such as squash (Cucurbita moschata), peanuts (Arachis sp.), and cotton (Gossypium barbadense). We report here an examination of starch grains preserved in the calculus of human teeth from these sites that provides direct evidence for the early consumption of cultivated squash and peanuts along with two other major food plants not previously detected. Starch from the seeds of Phaseolus and Inga feuillei, the flesh of Cucurbita moschata fruits, and the nuts of Arachis was routinely present on numerous teeth that date to between 8210 and 6970 ¹⁴C yr B.P. Early plant diets appear to have been diverse and stable through time and were rich in cultivated foods typical of later Andean agriculture. Our data provide early archaeological evidence for Phaseolus beans and I. feuillei, an important tree crop, and indicate that effective food production systems that contributed significant dietary inputs were present in the Ñanchoc region by 8000 ¹⁴C yr B.P. Starch grain studies of dental remains document plants and edible parts of them not normally preserved in archaeological records and can assume primary roles as direct indicators of ancient human diets and agriculture.

We present a unique perspective on the role of historical processes in community assembly by synthesizing analyses of species turnover among communities with environmental data and independent, population genetic-derived estimates of among-community dispersal. We sampled floodplain and terra firme communities of the diverse tree genus Inga (Fabaceae) across a 250-km transect in Amazonian Peru and found patterns of distance-decay in compositional similarity in both habitat types. However, conventional analyses of distance-decay masked a zone of increased species turnover present in the middle of the transect. We estimated past seed dispersal among the same communities by examining geographic plastid DNA variation for eight widespread Inga species and uncovered a population genetic break in the majority of species that is geographically coincident with the zone of increased species turnover. Analyses of these and 12 additional Inga species shared between two communities located on opposite sides of the zone showed that the populations experienced divergence 42,000–612,000 y ago. Our results suggest that the observed distance decay is the result not of environmental gradients or dispersal limitation coupled with ecological drift—as conventionally interpreted under neutral ecological theory—but rather of secondary contact between historically separated communities. Thus, even at this small spatial scale, historical processes seem to significantly impact species’ distributions and community assembly. Other documented zones of increased species turnover found in the western Amazon basin or elsewhere may be related to similar historical processes.

This preliminary research was aimed at finding the roots in various Eurasian proto-languages directly related to pulses and giving the words denoting the same in modern European languages. Six Proto-Indo-European roots were indentified, namely arnk(')- ('a leguminous plant'), *bhabh- ('field bean'), *[Formula: see text] ('a kernel of leguminous plant', 'pea'), ghArs- ('a leguminous plant'), *kek- ('pea') and *lent- ('lentil'). No Proto-Uralic root was attested save hypothetically *kača ('pea'), while there were two Proto-Altaic roots, *bŭkrV ('pea') and *[Formula: see text] ('lentil'). The Proto-Caucasianx root *[Formula: see text] denoted pea, while another one, *hōwł(ā) ('bean', 'lentil') and the Proto-Basque root *iłha-r ('pea', 'bean', 'vetch') could have a common Proto-Sino-Caucasian ancestor, *hVwłV ('bean') within the hypothetic Dené-Caucasian language superfamily. The Modern Maltese preserved the memory of two Proto-Semitic roots, *'adaš- ('lentil') and *pūl- ('field bean'). The presented results prove that the most ancient Eurasian pulse crops were well-known and extensively cultivated by the ancestors of all modern European nations. The attested lexicological continuum witnesses the existence of a millennia-long links between the peoples of Eurasia to their mutual benefit. This research is meant to encourage interdisciplinary concerted actions between plant scientists dealing with crop evolution and biodiversity, archaeobotanists and language historians.

In this paper, we discuss, from both biological and cultural perspectives, the ancient human-plant liaison that gave rise to Near Eastern agriculture. We explain the biological aspects of Near Eastern plant domestication by a comparative analysis of legume vs. cereal crop evolution. This comparison is illustrated by the natural distribution, ecological affinity, physiology, population structure, floral biology, growth habit, plant stature, seed dispersal mode, and seed dormancy of both wild and domesticated plants of these crop groups. We discuss the differences between Near Eastern legumes and cereals with regard to each of the above aspects, and we highlight the relevance of these differences with regard to Neolithic decision-making, adoption for farming, and subsequent evolution under domestication. We reached the following conclusions: (1) Near Eastern legumes underwent different evolutionary trajectories under domestication as compared with their companion cereals, despite apparent similarities between selection under domestication of both crop groups. (2) Careful comparison of pea, lentil, and chickpea shows that each of the Near Eastern legume crops has a unique evolutionary history in its own right, and this also holds true for the cereal crops. (3) The evolutionary history of each of the Near Eastern crops, prior to as well as after domestication, is well-reflected in its adaptation profile in present-day cropping systems, which determines each crop's relative economic importance in different world regions (e.g., chickpea is a major pulse in the Indian subcontinent, and pea is a more important crop in temperate regions, while barley has the widest adaptation, extending from high-latitude temperate regions to semi-arid Mediterranean systems). (4) Ancient choice-making, as reflected in the founder crops repertoire, involved nutritional considerations that may have outweighed grain yield per area and/or time unit criteria.

The paper explores the problems of isolating criteria for use in identifying ancient remains of plant foods, and the possibility of using chemical residues in this role. It first discusses factors affecting the choice of such chemical criteria, and the taxonomic framework within which all chemical, morphological and histological criteria have to be assessed and applied. It then outlines three examples of the way in which criteria of all three types have been used by our research group in identifying archaeologically critical remains of foods plants from Late Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and early Neolithic sites in the Near East.

Since 1999, various forward- and reverse-genetic approaches have uncovered nearly 200 genes required for symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) in legumes. These discoveries advanced our understanding of the evolution of SNF in plants and its relationship to other beneficial endosymbioses, signaling between plants and microbes, the control of microbial infection of plant cells, the control of plant cell division leading to nodule development, autoregulation of nodulation, intracellular accommodation of bacteria, nodule oxygen homeostasis, the control of bacteroid differentiation, metabolism and transport supporting symbiosis, and the control of nodule senescence. This review catalogs and contextualizes all of the plant genes currently known to be required for SNF in two model legume species, Medicago truncatula and Lotus japonicus, and two crop species, Glycine max (soybean) and Phaseolus vulgaris (common bean). We also briefly consider the future of SNF genetics in the era of pan-genomics and genome editing.

Fil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina

Domestication is an evolutionary process of species divergence in which morphological and physiological changes result from the cultivation/tending of plant or animal species by a mutualistic partner, most prominently humans. Darwin used domestication as an analogy to evolution by natural selection although there is strong debate on whether this process of species evolution by human association is an appropriate model for evolutionary study. There is a presumption that selection under domestication is strong and most models assume rapid evolution of cultivated species. Using archaeological data for 11 species from 60 archaeological sites, we measure rates of evolution in two plant domestication traits—nonshattering and grain/seed size increase. Contrary to previous assumptions, we find the rates of phenotypic evolution during domestication are slow, and significantly lower or comparable to those observed among wild species subjected to natural selection. Our study indicates that the magnitudes of the rates of evolution during the domestication process, including the strength of selection, may be similar to those measured for wild species. This suggests that domestication may be driven by unconscious selection pressures similar to that observed for natural selection, and the study of the domestication process may indeed prove to be a valid model for the study of evolutionary change.