Mouton | EPFL Graph Search

vignette|270px|Un timbre de 1979 des îles Féroé dont le mouton est un animal emblématique. Le mouton, Ovis aries, est un animal domestique, mammifère herbivore ruminant appartenant au genre Ovis (ovins) de la sous-famille des Caprinés, dans la grande famille des Bovidés. Comme tous les ruminants, les moutons sont des ongulés marchant sur deux doigts (Cetartiodactyla). Dans le langage courant, les moutons désignent un ensemble où la femelle est la brebis et le mâle le bélier, tandis que le jeune mâle est un agneau et la jeune femelle une agnelle. Le mouton est l'un des premiers animaux à avoir été domestiqué. Il est surtout élevé pour son lait (fabrication de fromages), sa viande, sa peau avec laquelle est préparé un cuir appelé « basane » et sa laine. La laine de mouton est la fibre d'origine animale la plus utilisée. Ovis aries représente aujourd'hui l'essentiel des populations d'ovins, bien que six espèces sauvages existent toujours. Il fut domestiqué à la fin du VIIIe millénaire

Optimizing Carbon Storage Within a Spatially Heterogeneous Upland Grassland Through Sheep Grazing Management

Charlotte Vandenberghe

Livestock grazing is known to influence carbon (C) storage in vegetation and soil. Yet, for grazing management to be used to optimize C storage, large scale investigations that take into account the typically heterogeneous distribution of grazers and C across the landscape are required. In a landscape-scale grazing experiment in the Scottish uplands, we quantified C stored in swards dominated by the widespread tussock-forming grass species Molinia caerulea. The impact of three sheep stocking treatments ('commercial' 2.7 ewes ha(-1) y(-1), 'low' 0.9 ewes ha(-1) y(-1) and no livestock) on plant C stocks was determined at three spatial scales; tussock, sward and landscape, and these data were used to predict long-term changes in soil organic carbon (SOC). We found that tussocks were particularly dense C stores (that is, high C mass per unit area) and that grazing reduced their abundance and thus influenced C stocks held in M. caerulea swards across the landscape; C stocks were 3.83, 5.01 and 6.85 Mg C ha(-1) under commercial sheep grazing, low sheep grazing and no grazing, respectively. Measured vegetation C in the three grazing treatments provided annual C inputs to RothC, an organic matter turnover model, to predict changes in SOC over 100 years. RothC predicted SOC to decline under commercial sheep stocking and increase under low sheep grazing and no grazing. Our findings suggest that no sheep and low-intensity sheep grazing are better upland management practices for enhancing plant and soil C sequestration than commercial sheep grazing. This is evaluated in the context of other upland management objectives.

Springer2014

Influence of livestock grazing on meadow pipit foraging behaviour in upland grassland

Charlotte Vandenberghe

Changes in grazing management are believed to be responsible for declines in populations of birds breeding in grassland over the last decades. The relationships between grazing management regimes, vegetation structure and composition and the availability of invertebrate food resources to passerine birds remain poorly understood. In this Study, we investigated the foraging site selection of meadow pipits (Anthus pratensis L.) breeding in high intensity sheep-grazed plots or low intensity mixed (i.e. sheep and cattle)-grazed plots. We sampled above-ground invertebrates, measured vegetation height and density and conducted a vegetation survey in areas where meadow pipits were observed to forage and areas that were randomly selected. Birds foraged in areas with a lower vegetation height and density and in areas containing a lower proportion of the dominant, tussock-forming grass species Molinia caerulea. They did not forage in areas with a total higher invertebrate biomass but at areas with preferred vegetation characteristics invertebrate biomass tended to be higher in foraging sites than random sites. The foraging distance of meadow pipits was higher in the intensively grazed plots. Our findings support the hypothesis that resource-independent factors such as food accessibility and forager mobility may determine patch selection and are of more importance as selection criteria than food abundance per se. Food accessibility seems to become an even more important selection criterion under high grazing intensity, where prey abundance and size decrease. In our upland grazing system, a low intensity, mixed grazing regime seems to provide a more suitable combination of sward height, plant diversity, structural heterogeneity and food supply for meadow pipit foraging activity compared to a more intensive grazing regime dominated by sheep. (c) 2009 Gesellschaft fur Okologie. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

2009

Riding the whole-genome data tsunami: a landscape genomic study of local adaptation in Moroccan sheep and goats

Stéphane Joost, Kevin Leempoel, Sylvie Stucki

In Morocco, like in other developing countries, small ruminants play an important role in the livelihood of a large proportion of farmers and landless shepherds. Conserving traditional breeds is essential in these countries since they are able to prosper in challenging habitats and their rich genomic resources allow them to adapt to new conditions. Therefore the key genetic features of local adaptation must be identified, notably with landscape genomic approaches, in order to support and encourage sustainable breeding of low-input livestock. To this end, the NEXTGEN project led an extended sampling campaign of local small ruminants to study local adaptation in Morocco. Over 2000 sheep and goats were sampled in small farms and flocks spread over the whole country. For each species, 164 samples were selected in order to reliably represent the environmental conditions while having an even spatial distribution. A landscape genomic approach was applied to detect selection signatures among 28 million SNPs in sheep and 19 million SNPs in goats. In summary, the habitat of each sample is characterised with environmental variables and significant genotype/environment associations point out the loci potentially under selection. Data were processed with Samßada, a specific landscape genomic software program. Preliminary results show that the method is able to process whole-genome sequence data. However the relatively low number of samples compared with the number of SNPs implies the existence of false positives among the most significant results. Measuring the spatial dependence between samples, as featured in Samßada, may facilitate their detection and interpretation. Thus combining whole-genome analysis with spatial statistics may lead to an integrated biogeoinformatic approach to study local adaptation.

2014

Influence of livestock grazing on meadow pipit foraging behaviour in upland grassland

Charlotte Vandenberghe

2009