The Predictive Value of Non-Referential Beat Gestures: Early Use in Parent-Child Interactions Predicts Narrative Abilities at 5 Years of Age.

A longitudinal study with 45 children (Hispanic, 13%; non-Hispanic, 87%) investigated whether the early production of non-referential beat and flip gestures, as opposed to referential iconic gestures, in parent-child naturalistic interactions from 14 to 58 months old predicts narrative abilities at age 5. Results revealed that only non-referential beats significantly (p < .01) predicted later narrative productions. The pragmatic functions of the children's speech that accompany these gestures were also analyzed in a representative sample of 18 parent-child dyads, revealing that beats were typically associated with biased assertions or questions. These findings show that the early use of beats predicts narrative abilities later in development, and suggest that this relation is likely due to the pragmatic-structuring function that beats reflect in early discourse.

Longer Food Chains in Pelagic Ecosystems: Trophic Energetics of Animal Body Size and Metabolic Efficiency.

Factors constraining the structure of food webs can be investigated by comparing classes of ecosystems. We find that pelagic ecosystems, those based on one-celled primary producers, have longer food chains than terrestrial ecosystems. Yet pelagic ecosystems have lower primary productivity, contrary to the hypothesis that greater energy flows permit higher trophic levels. We hypothesize that longer food chain length in pelagic ecosystems, compared with terrestrial ecosystems, is associated with smaller pelagic animal body size permitting more rapid trophic energy transfer. Assuming negative allometric dependence of biomass production rate on body mass at each trophic level, the lowest three pelagic animal trophic levels are estimated to add biomass more rapidly than their terrestrial counterparts by factors of 12, 4.8, and 2.6. Pelagic animals consequently transport primary production to a fifth trophic level 50-190 times more rapidly than animals in terrestrial webs. This difference overcomes the approximately fivefold slower pelagic basal productivity, energetically explaining longer pelagic food chains. In addition, ectotherms, dominant at lower pelagic animal trophic levels, have high metabolic efficiency, also favoring higher rates of trophic energy transfer in pelagic ecosystems. These two animal trophic flow mechanisms imply longer pelagic food chains, reestablishing an important role for energetics in food web structure.

Oceans of plenty? Challenges, advancements, and future directions for the provision of evidence-based fisheries management advice.

Marine population modeling, which underpins the scientific advice to support fisheries interventions, is an active research field with recent advancements to address modern challenges (e.g., climate change) and enduring issues (e.g., data limitations). Based on discussions during the 'Land of Plenty' session at the 2021 World Fisheries Congress, we synthesize current challenges, recent advances, and interdisciplinary developments in biological fisheries models (i.e., data-limited, stock assessment, spatial, ecosystem, and climate), management strategy evaluation, and the scientific advice that bridges the science-policy interface. Our review demonstrates that proliferation of interdisciplinary research teams and enhanced data collection protocols have enabled increased integration of spatiotemporal, ecosystem, and socioeconomic dimensions in many fisheries models. However, not all management systems have the resources to implement model-based advice, while protocols for sharing confidential data are lacking and impeding research advances. We recommend that management and modeling frameworks continue to adopt participatory co-management approaches that emphasize wider inclusion of local knowledge and stakeholder input to fill knowledge gaps and promote information sharing. Moreover, fisheries management, by which we mean the end-to-end process of data collection, scientific analysis, and implementation of evidence-informed management actions, must integrate improved communication, engagement, and capacity building, while incorporating feedback loops at each stage. Increasing application of management strategy evaluation is viewed as a critical unifying component, which will bridge fisheries modeling disciplines, aid management decision-making, and better incorporate the array of stakeholders, thereby leading to a more proactive, pragmatic, transparent, and inclusive management framework-ensuring better informed decisions in an uncertain world. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11160-022-09726-7.

The origins of higher-order thinking lie in children's spontaneous talk across the pre-school years.

Higher-order thinking is relational reasoning in which multiple representations are linked together, through inferences, comparisons, abstractions, and hierarchies. We examine the development of higher-order thinking in 64 preschool-aged children, observed from 14 to 58 months in naturalistic situations at home. We used children's spontaneous talk about and with relations (i.e., higher-order thinking talk, or HOTT) as a window onto their higher-order thinking skills. We find that surface HOTT, in which relations between representations are more immediate and easily perceptible, appears before-and is far more frequent than-structure HOTT, in which relations between representations are more abstract and less easy to perceive. Child-specific factors (including early vocabulary and gesture use, first-born status, and family income) predict differences in children's onset (i.e., age of acquisition) of HOTT and its trajectory of use across development. Although HOTT utterances tend to be longer and more syntactically complex than non-HOTT utterances, HOTT frequently appears in non-complex utterances, and a substantial proportion of children achieve complex utterance onset prior to the onset of HOTT. This finding suggests that complex language is neither necessary nor sufficient for HOTT to occur; other factors above and beyond complex linguistic skills are involved in the onset and use of higher-order thinking. Finally, we found that the trajectory of HOTT, particularly structure HOTT-but not complex utterances-during the preschool period predicts standardized outcome measures of inference and analogy skills in grade school, which underscores the crucial role that this kind of early talk plays for later outcomes.