Insufficient yet improving involvement of the global south in top sustainability science publications.

The creation of global research partnerships is critical to produce shared knowledge for the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Sustainability science promotes the coproduction of inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge, with the expectation that studies will be carried out through groups and truly collaborative networks. As a consequence, sustainability research, in particular that published in high impact journals, should lead the way in terms of ethical partnership in scientific collaboration. Here, we examined this issue through a quantitative analysis of the articles published in Nature Sustainability (300 papers by 2135 authors) and Nature (2994 papers by 46,817 authors) from January 2018 to February 2021. Focusing on these journals allowed us to test whether research published under the banner of sustainability science favoured a more equitable involvement of authors from countries belonging to different income categories, by using the journal Nature as a control. While the findings provide evidence of still insufficient involvement of Low-and-Low-Middle-Income-Countries (LLMICs) in Nature Sustainability publications, they also point to promising improvements in the involvement of such authors. Proportionally, there were 4.6 times more authors from LLMICs in Nature Sustainability than in Nature articles, and 68.8-100% of local Global South studies were conducted with host country scientists (reflecting the discouragement of parachute research practices), with local scientists participating in key research steps. We therefore provide evidence of the promising, yet still insufficient, involvement of low-income countries in top sustainability science publications and discuss ongoing initiatives to improve this.

Orienting insecticide research in the tropics to meet the sustainable development goals.

Tropical cropping systems are highly dependent on synthetic insecticides, which generates sustainability issues. We performed a bibliometric analysis of the current insecticide literature (2017-2019) and used the Sustainable Development Goals roadmap to identify research topics in insecticide research that should be promoted to attain sustainable cropping systems. Bioinsecticides and integrated pest management were identified as potential substitutes for synthetic insecticides while insecticide contamination, degradation and impacts on non-target organisms were pinpointed as topics with the potential to lessen detrimental effects of synthetic insecticides. We also highlighted how peculiarities specific to the tropics (tropical climate, high biodiversity, strong traditional knowledge, insecticide regulations, lack of local scientific data, and farmer training through extension services) affect the identified research topics and why they should be taken into account. We finally suggest to combine the identified research topics in order to promote research synergies across disciplines.

Thermal pace-of-life strategies improve phenological predictions in ectotherms.

Phenological variability among populations is widespread in nature. A few predictive phenological models integrate intrapopulational variability, but none has ever explored the individual strategies potentially occurring within a population. The "pace-of-life" syndrome accounts for such individual strategies, but has yet to be explored under a phenological context. Here we integrated, for the first time, the slow-fast thermal strategies stemming from the "pace-of-life" into a mechanistic predictive framework. We obtained 4619 phenological observations of an important crop pest in the Bolivian Andes by individually following 840 individuals under five rearing temperatures and across nine life stages. The model calibrated with the observed individual "pace-of-life" strategies showed a higher accuracy in phenological predictions than when accounting for intrapopulational variability alone. We further explored our framework with generated data and suggest that ectotherm species with a high number of life stages and with slow and/or fast individuals should exhibit a greater variance of populational phenology, resulting in a potentially longer time window of interaction with other species. We believe that the "pace-of-life" framework is a promising approach to improve phenological prediction across a wide array of species.

Market access and community size influence pastoral management of native and exotic livestock species: A case study in communities of the Cordillera Real in Bolivia's high Andean wetlands.

Grazing areas management is of utmost importance in the Andean region. In the valleys of the Bolivian Cordillera Real near La Paz, pastoralism constitutes the traditional way for people to insure food security and economical sustainability. In these harsh mountains, unique and productive wetlands sustained by glacial water streams are of utmost importance for feeding cattle herds during the dry season. After the colonization by the Spanish, a shift in livestock species has been observed, with the introduction of exotic species such as cows and sheep, resulting in a different impact on pastures compared to native camelid species-llamas and alpacas. Here we explored some of the social-economical and environmental drivers that motivate Bolivian pastoralists to prefer exotic over native livestock species, based on 36 household surveys in the Cordillera Real. We constructed a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Model in order to assess the relationships between these drivers. Our results suggest that the access to market influenced pastoralists to reshape their herd composition, by increasing the number of sheep. They also suggest that community size increased daily grazing time in pastures, therefore intensifying the grazing pressure. At a broader scale, this study highlights the effects of some social-economical and environmental drivers on mountain herding systems.