Biodiversité

Memories of home

Most animals spend the majority of their lives within a familiar home range. Cognitive tests on pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) support the hypothesis that spatial reference memory underlies the ability to develop a home range, as well as suggesting its critical role in allowing birds to become familiar enough with the landscape to avoid ambush predators.

The cultivation of diverse farmers’ varieties/landraces, which tend to be well-adapted and suited to local production systems, confers increased resilience for crop production. Farmers’ varieties/landraces are also potential sources of traits for crop improvement, especially for developing varieties tolerant to biotic and abiotic stresses and for incorporating farmer-preferred traits. Unfortunately, many of these genetic resources have been replaced by modern cultivars in recent decades, resulting in a reduction in the total number of different varieties grown and/or loss of heterogeneity. Such losses make farming systems less resilient, especially to shocks from abiotic and biotic stresses.

Sylvie Lemmet présente les grands objectifs qui doivent figurer dans un accord ambitieux et les difficultés qui restent à résoudre.

Adopter le cadre mondial pour la biodiversité sachant aussi que la Convention est également accompagnée de deux protocoles : le Protocole de Nagoya, sur l'accès aux ressources génétiques, et le Protocole de Carthagène, sur la prévention des risques biotechnologiques.

Paris, France | AFP | mercredi 06/12/2017 - Moyen d'éradiquer des moustiques tueurs? ou promesse de désastre? Le "forçage génétique", technologie capable d'éradique