A comprehensive analysis of European craft guilds through eight centuries of economic history
Guilds ruled many crafts and trades from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution, and have always ...attracted debate and controversy. They were sometimes viewed as efficient institutions that guaranteed quality and skills. But they also excluded competitors, manipulated markets, and blocked innovations. Did the benefits of guilds outweigh their costs? Analyzing thousands of guilds that dominated European economies from 1000 to 1880,The European Guildsuses vivid examples and clear economic reasoning to answer that question.
Sheilagh Ogilvie's book features the voices of honourable guild masters, underpaid journeymen, exploited apprentices, shady officials, and outraged customers, and follows the stories of the "vile encroachers"-women, migrants, Jews, gypsies, bastards, and many others-desperate to work but hunted down by the guilds as illicit competitors. She investigates the benefits of guilds but also shines a light on their dark side. Guilds sometimes provided important services, but they also manipulated markets to profit their members. They regulated quality but prevented poor consumers from buying goods cheaply. They fostered work skills but denied apprenticeships to outsiders. They transmitted useful techniques but blocked innovations that posed a threat. Guilds existed widely not because they corrected market failures or served the common good but because they benefited two powerful groups-guild members and political elites.
Exploring guilds' inner workings across eight centuries,The European Guildsshows how privileged institutions and exclusive networks shape the wider economy-for good or ill.
This classification method for quantification of waterbird nutrient cycling guilds focuses on the location of feeding habitats and the quantitative role of waterbirds in the nutrient and energy flow ...for inland aquatic ecosystems. The classification is a complex integration of the taxonomic, trophic, feeding and daily habitat use patterns based on most relevant previous studies and reference data in relation with the ecology and nutrient cycling of waterbirds: A) Net-importer guild: includes species which feed mostly outside inland waters in the terrestrial ecosystems and wetlands, but use water bodies as gathering and roosting sites (geese, cranes). B) Importer-exporter guild: includes species which feed both outside and in of inland waters and wetlands (dabbling ducks and gulls). C) Net-exporter guild: includes species which feed mostly on inland waters and wetlands (diving ducks, grebes, cormorants, small herons, most shorebirds). Conclusion of main findings that method can significantly contribute to the better understanding how waterbirds can effect the environment and the guilds as ecological indicators quantify their ecosystem functions, services.•Net-importer guild includes species which feed mostly outside the inland waters•Importer-exporter guild includes species which feed both in- and outside inland waters•Net-exporter guild includes species which feed mostly inside the inland waters
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The majority of the world's terrestrial large carnivores have undergone substantial range contractions and many of these species are currently threatened with extinction. However, there has been ...little effort to fully quantify the extent of large carnivore range contractions, which hinders our ability to understand the roles and relative drivers of such trends. Here we present and analyse a newly constructed and comprehensive set of large carnivore range contraction maps. We reveal the extent to which ranges have contracted since historical times and identify regions and biomes where range contractions have been particularly large. In summary, large carnivores that have experienced the greatest range contractions include the red wolf (Canis rufus) (greater than 99%), Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis) (99%), tiger (Panthera tigris) (95%) and lion (Panthera leo) (94%). In general, the greatest range contractions occurred in Southeastern Asia and Africa. Motivated by the ecological importance of intact large carnivore guilds, we also examined the spatial extent of intact large carnivore guilds both for the entire world and regionally. We found that intact carnivore guilds occupy just 34% of the world's land area. This compares to 96% in historic times. Spatial modelling of range contractions showed that contractions were significantly more likely in regions with high rural human population density, cattle density or cropland. Our results offer new insights into how best to prevent further range contractions for the world's largest carnivores, which will assist efforts to conserve these species and their important ecological effects.
Fungi are important members of soil microbial communities in row-crop and grassland soils, provide essential ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling, organic matter decomposition, and soil ...structure, but fungi are also more sensitive to physical disturbance than other microorganisms. Adoption of conservation management practices such as no-till and cover cropping shape the structure and function of soil fungal communities. No-till eliminates or greatly reduces the physical disturbance that re-distributes organisms and nutrients in the soil profile and disrupts fungal hyphal networks, while cover crops provide additional types and greater abundance of organic carbon sources. In a long-term, row crop field experiment in California's Central Valley we hypothesized that a more diverse and plant symbiont-enriched fungal soil community would develop in soil managed with reduced tillage practices and/or cover crops compared to standard tillage and no cover crops. We measured the interacting effects of tillage and cover cropping on fungal communities based on fungal ITS sequence assigned to ecological guilds. Functional groups within fungal communities were most sensitive to long-term tillage practices, with 45% of guild-assigned taxa responding to tillage, and a higher proportion of symbiotroph taxa under no-till. In contrast, diversity measures reflected greater sensitivity to cover crops, with higher phylogenetic diversity observed in soils managed with cover crops, though only 10% of guild-assigned taxa responded to cover crops. The relative abundance of pathotrophs did not vary across the management treatments. Cover cropping increased species diversity, while no-till shifted the symbiotroph:saprotroph ratio to favor symbiotrophs. These management-induced shifts in fungal community composition could lead to greater ecosystem resilience and provide greater access of crops to limiting resources.
•Different farming practices shift soil fungal community functional composition.•Cover crops increase fungal community diversity.•No-till increases the relative proportion of symbiotrophs and decreases the relative proportion of saprotrophs.
•Diameter of living and standing dead trees, and deadwood drive forest bird abundance.•The landscape context influences bird numbers in structurally similar forests.•Broadleaf cover and distance ...between forest sites drive bird richness and diversity.•Simply providing habitat structures for conservation is not a viable solution.
The variability in the amount and configuration of broad habitat types in the landscape, together with their structural complexity, influence observed biodiversity patterns. When considering structurally similar sites of the same habitat type, the variability in the abundance, species richness or diversity of organisms may be explained by the landscape context. To assess the numerical response of species to the landscape context, in terms of amount and configuration of forest environments, we investigated the bird assemblages of similarly structured forest habitats in an extensively managed forest region, encompassing different landscape contexts. We considered the numerical response of bird assemblages, in terms of abundance, species richness and diversity, and relative abundance of specific guilds, to the landscape context. We considered the forest cover at different spatial scales as a measure of habitat amount, while we quantified aspects of habitat configuration using various landscape metrics, and measured local forest structures. We found significant responses in multiple forest bird species to three important indices of forest structures: mean diameter of living trees, mean diameter of dead trees and volume of lying deadwood. Within similarly structured forest plots, bird assemblages showed responses linked with the landscape context, while plots with different habitat structure showed similar responses to the landscape context. In particular, there was a clear positive response of birds to the amount of broadleaf and mixed forest cover in the landscape. In addition, the distance between forest patches negatively affected species richness and diversity. Within landscapes, the increase of broadleaf in the existing forest area could boost abundance and diversity, decrease isolation levels for species dependent on broadleaves and enhance structural connectivity, generally favouring the majority of the species. Our findings suggest that the simple provision of habitat structures cannot represent a viable solution for biodiversity conservation and that the use of structural indicators of biodiversity like deadwood and age of canopy trees for assessing conservation value of forest needs to be integrated with landscape-scale indices. Our analysis clearly shows that the amount of habitat available in the surrounding landscape is linked with positive biodiversity responses. As human activities can alter both the provision of important habitat structures in stands across the landscape, as well as their overall landscape context, an integrated multi-scale biodiversity management is highly advisable.
The field of eco‐evolutionary dynamics is developing rapidly, with a growing number of well‐designed experiments quantifying the impact of evolution on ecological processes and patterns, ranging from ...population demography to community composition and ecosystem functioning. The key challenge remains to transfer the insights of these proof‐of‐principle experiments to natural settings, where multiple species interact and the dynamics are far more complex than those studied in most experiments.
Here, we discuss potential pitfalls of building a framework on eco‐evolutionary dynamics that is based on data on single species studied in isolation from interspecific interactions, which can lead to both under‐ and overestimation of the impact of evolution on ecological processes. Underestimation of evolution‐driven ecological changes could occur in a single‐species approach when the focal species is involved in co‐evolutionary dynamics, whereas overestimation might occur due to increased rates of evolution following ecological release of the focal species.
In order to develop a multi‐species perspective on eco‐evolutionary dynamics, we discuss the need for a broad‐sense definition of “eco‐evolutionary feedbacks” that includes any reciprocal interaction between ecological and evolutionary processes, next to a narrow‐sense definition that refers to interactions that directly feed back on the interactor that evolves.
We discuss the challenges and opportunities of using more natural settings in eco‐evolutionary studies by gradually adding complexity: (a) multiple interacting species within a guild, (b) food web interactions and (c) evolving metacommunities in multiple habitat patches in a landscape. A literature survey indicated that only a few studies on microbial systems so far developed a truly multi‐species approach in their analysis of eco‐evolutionary dynamics, and mostly so in artificially constructed communities.
Finally, we provide a road map of methods to study eco‐evolutionary dynamics in more natural settings. Eco‐evolutionary studies involving multiple species are necessarily demanding and might require intensive collaboration among research teams, but are highly needed.
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Using Chinese A-share listed firms from 2003 to 2021, we investigate the impact of merchant guild culture (MGC) on corporate cash holdings. Our results show that firms with stronger MGC influence ...exhibit lower levels of cash reserves. Cross-sectional analysis reveals that this effect is weaker for firms with greater foreign cultural influence, greater economic policy uncertainty, and higher levels of industry competition. The mechanism analysis reveals that MGC affects cash holdings by increasing risk preferences and mitigating agency conflicts. We also find that MGC can increase the value of cash holdings. Overall, our findings shed light on the economic consequences of MGC from the perspective of cash holdings.
•We investigate the impact of merchant guild culture (MGC) on corporate cash holdings.•Firms with stronger MGC influence exhibit lower levels of cash reserves.•This effect is weaker when foreign cultural influence, economic policy uncertainty, or industry competition are greater.•MGC affects cash holdings by increasing risk preferences and mitigating agency conflicts.
Top‐order predators often have positive effects on biological diversity owing to their key functional roles in regulating trophic cascades and other ecological processes. Their loss has been ...identified as a major factor contributing to the decline of biodiversity in both aquatic and terrestrial systems. Consequently, restoring and maintaining the ecological function of top predators is a critical global imperative. Here we review studies of the ecological effects of the dingo Canis lupus dingo, Australia's largest land predator, using this as a case study to explore the influence of a top predator on biodiversity at a continental scale. The dingo was introduced to Australia by people at least 3500 years ago and has an ambiguous status owing to its brief history on the continent, its adverse impacts on livestock production and its role as an ecosystem architect. A large body of research now indicates that dingoes regulate ecological cascades, particularly in arid Australia, and that the removal of dingoes results in an increase in the abundances and impacts of herbivores and invasive mesopredators, most notably the red fox Vulpes vulpes. The loss of dingoes has been linked to widespread losses of small and medium‐sized native mammals, the depletion of plant biomass due to the effects of irrupting herbivore populations and increased predation rates by red foxes. We outline a suite of conceptual models to describe the effects of dingoes on vertebrate populations across different Australian environments. Finally, we discuss key issues that require consideration or warrant research before the ecological effects of dingoes can be incorporated formally into biodiversity conservation programs.
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