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The timeframe of Indigenous settlements in Northeast North America in the 15 th -17 th centuries CE has until very recently been largely described in terms of European material culture and history. An independent chronology was usually absent. Radiocarbon dating has recently begun to change this conventional model radically. The challenge, if an alternative, independent timeframe and history is to be created, is to articulate a high-resolution chronology appropriate and comparable with the lived histories of the Indigenous village settlements of the period. Improving substantially on previous initial work, we report here high-resolution defined chronologies for the three most extensively excavated and iconic ancestral Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk) village sites in New York (Smith-Pagerie, Klock and Garoga), and a fourth early historic Indigenous site, Brigg’s Run, and re-assess the wider chronology of the Mohawk River Valley in the mid-15 th to earlier 17 th centuries. This new chronology confirms initial suggestions from radiocarbon that a wholesale reappraisal of past assumptions is necessary, since our dates conflict completely with past dates and the previously presumed temporal order of these three iconic sites. In turn, a wider reassessment of northeastern North American early history and re-interpretation of Atlantic connectivities in the later 15 th through early 17 th centuries is required. Our new closely defined date ranges are achieved employing detailed archival analysis of excavation records to establish the contextual history for radiocarbon-dated samples from each site, tree-ring defined short time series from wood charcoal samples fitted against the radiocarbon calibration curve (‘wiggle-matching’), and Bayesian chronological modelling for each of the individual sites integrating all available prior knowledge and radiocarbon dating probabilities. We define (our preferred model) most likely (68.3% highest posterior density) village occupation ranges for Smith-Pagerie of ~1478–1498, Klock of ~1499–1521, Garoga of ~1550–1582, and Brigg’s Run of ~1619–1632. 

Tepary bean (Phaseolus acutifoliusA. Gray), indigenous to the arid climates of northern Mexico and the Southwest United States, diverged from common bean (Phaseolus vulgarisL.), approximately 2 million years ago and exhibits a wide range of resistance to biotic stressors. The tepary genome is highly syntenic to the common bean genome providing a foundation for discovery and breeding of agronomic traits between these two crop species. Although a limited number of adaptive traits from tepary bean have been introgressed into common bean, hybridization barriers between these two species required the development of bridging lines to alleviate this barrier. Thus, to fully utilize the extant tepary bean germplasm as both a crop and as a donor of adaptive traits, we developed a diversity panel of 422 cultivated, weedy, and wild tepary bean accessions which were then genotyped and phenotyped to enable population genetic analyses and genome‐wide association studies for their response to a range of biotic stressors. Population structure analyses of the panel revealed eight subpopulations and the differentiation of botanical varieties withinP. acutifolius. Genome‐wide association studies revealed loci and candidate genes underlying biotic stress resistance including quantitative trait loci for resistance to weevils, common bacterial blight, Fusarium wilt, and bean common mosaic necrosis virus that can be harnessed not only for tepary bean but also common bean improvement.

 

The guenons (tribe Cercopithecini) are a diverse and primarily arboreal radiation of Old World monkeys from Africa. However, preliminary behavioral observations of the lesula (Cercopithecus lomamiensis), a little‐known guenon species described in 2012, report it spending substantial amounts of time on the ground. New specimens allow us to present the first description of lesula postcranial morphology and apply a comparative functional morphology approach to supplement our knowledge of its locomotor behavior.

To infer the substrate use preferences of the lesula, 22 postcranial variables correlated with locomotion were assessed in a sample of 151 adult guenon specimens, including twoC. lomamiensis. Using multivariate statistical analyses, we predict the amount of time the lesula spends on the ground relative to the comparative sample.

Results suggest that the lesula spends nearly half its time on the ground, and the two available individuals were classified as semiterrestrial and terrestrial with strong support. Comparisons with two outgroup cercopithecid taxa (Colobus guerezaandMacaca mulatta) demonstrate that, as a group, guenons retain signals of a generalized, semiterrestrially adapted postcranium compared to specialized arboreal cercopithecids.

These results corroborate preliminary behavioral observations of the lesula as a semiterrestrial to terrestrial primate and imply multiple evolutionary transitions in substrate use among the guenon radiation. A broader view of cercopithecoid evolution suggests that a semiterrestrial ancestor for extant guenons is more parsimonious than an arboreal one, indicating that the arboreal members of the group are probably recently derived from a more semiterrestrial ancestor.