Search results for "West Indies"

Late Quaternary changes in bat palaeobiodiversity and palaeobiogeography under climatic and anthropogenic pressure: new insights from Marie-Galante, …

2016

25 pages; International audience; Data on Lesser Antillean Late Quaternary fossil bat assemblages remains limited, leading to their general exclusion from studies focusing on Caribbean bat palaeobiodiversity and palaeobiogeography. Additionally, the role of climatic versus human pressure driving changes in faunal communities remains poorly understood. Here we describe a fossil bat assemblage from Blanchard Cave on Marie-Galante in the Lesser Antilles, which produced numerous bat remains from a well-dated, stratified context. Our study reveals the occurrence of at least 12 bat species during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene on Marie-Galante, whereas only eight species are currently kn…

Low contribution of Caribbean-based researchers to academic publications on biodiversity conservation in the insular Caribbean.

2021

11 pages; International audience; The insular Caribbean is among the most threatened global biodiversity hotspots, warranting urgent and effective action in conservation. However, the capacity of Caribbean-based researchers to address challenges in biodiversity conservation appears limited. To assess the latter, we used the contribution of Caribbean-based authors to the production of peer-reviewed journal papers on biodiversity conservation in the insular Caribbean as a proxy for research capacity. Moreover, because the insular Caribbean is a complex geopolitical system including sovereign states and overseas territories, we examined the contributions of these two groups to the number of pa…

Evolutionary History of the Nesophontidae, the Last Unplaced Recent Mammal Family

2016

The mammalian evolutionary tree has lost several major clades through recent human-caused extinctions. This process of historical biodiversity loss has particularly affected tropical island regions such as the Caribbean, an area of great evolutionary diversification but poor molecular preservation. The most enigmatic of the recently extinct endemic Caribbean mammals are the Nesophontidae, a family of morphologically plesiomorphic lipotyphlan insectivores with no consensus on their evolutionary affinities, and which constitute the only major recent mammal clade to lack any molecular information on their phylogenetic placement. Here, we use a palaeogenomic approach to place Nesophontidae with…

2019

Ingested soil is a major vector of organic contaminants from environment to free-ranged animals, particularly for grazing herbivores. Therefore, a better understanding of processes driving soil intake may provide new insights to limit animal exposure to contaminants and ensure safety of animal products. To maintain the supply service of livestock farming activities in contaminated areas, it is necessary to design adapted farming practices aiming at controlling the risk for human health. This study was conducted in the French West Indies, where chlordecone, an organochlorine insecticide previously used to protect banana plantation against the black weevil and banned since 1993, has polluted …

Biodechlord : à la recherche de traces de dégradation microbienne du chlordécone dans les sols contaminés des Antilles

2014

Session 5 - Milieux impactés / Impacted mediaSession 5 - Milieux impactés / Impacted media; Objectives: Chlordecone was intensively used in the French West Indies (FWI) to control the banana weewil. Recent surveys showed that arable soils cropped with banana, representing up to 20,000 ha, are contaminated this insecticide with concentrations ranging between 0.2 and 37.4 mg kg−1. Chlordecone was classified as a persistent organic pollutant in May 2009. It is not only contaminating soil resources but also water resources where it is often detected. This insecticide is bioaccumulated in different plant and animals thereby contaminating the food chain causing an important human health. This con…