Geoffrey Mesbahi- PhD - agroecology and animal husbandry
- Researcher at Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau
Geoffrey Mesbahi
- PhD - agroecology and animal husbandry
- Researcher at Forschungsinstitut für biologischen Landbau
Researcher - Grassland management and ruminant nutrition
About
31
Publications
4,638
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118
Citations
Introduction
I study the use of grass and trees for ruminant nutrition, and their interaction with biodiversity conservation and global warming at FiBL in Switzerland.
I also studied the behaviour of wild Titi monkeys at Santuário do Caraça (Brazil).
Skills and Expertise
Current institution
Additional affiliations
October 2020 - September 2022
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Study of trees nutritive value and trees consumption by dairy cows
January 2017 - August 2020
Parc Naturel Régional des Vosges du Nord
Position
- PhD Student
Description
- Prediction of agroecological permanent grasslands characteristics, and their trade-offs. Focus on the Vosges Mountains.
January 2017 - August 2020
Position
- PhD Student
Description
- Prediction of agroecological permanent grasslands characteristics, and their trade-offs. Focus on the Vosges mountains.
Education
September 2009 - September 2014
Publications
Publications (31)
L’agroforesterie pour la production fourragère désigne l’usage des arbres en tant que ressource de fourrage pour le bétail. Les animaux consomment les feuilles
et les jeunes rameaux soit directement sur l’arbre soit dans le cadre d’un
affouragement à la rame. En Suisse, aucune donnée sur les rendements et les valeurs alimentaires des feuilles ou d...
There is growing interest in using temperate forage trees to alleviate the effects of summer drought and heatwaves on herbaceous forage. However, forage trees remain understudied in temperate climates. We studied the seasonal dynamics of the nutritive value of 16 tree species commonly found in Western Europe. We collected 285 samples of tree leaves...
La philosophie de l’agriculture biologique implique que les pratiques agricoles s’inspirent des mécanismes naturels de développement du vivant. À ce titre, la déconnexion des productions animales et végétales opérée depuis la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle entrave la fourniture de nombreux services écosystémiques, et fragilise les exploitations qui...
Predator presentation experiments are widely used to investigate animal alarm vocalizations. They usually involve presentations of predator models or playbacks of predator calls, but it remains unclear whether the two paradigms provide similar results, a major limitation when investigating animal syntactic and semantic capacities. Here, we investig...
Planting fodder trees in grasslands increases vegetation diversity, reduces grassland vulnerability to climate change and provides additional fodder resource during periods of drought. However, the palatability of temperate fodder trees remains poorly studied. During 10 mornings in July 2021, we allowed 12 dairy cows to feed freely in a 4-year-old...
European permanent grasslands are the main source of livestock fodder and the main hotspot of botanical diversity, but the trade-offs between fodder production and botanical diversity conservation remain debated. This study aims to identify what grassland features influence fodder characteristics and to estimate the direction of correlation between...
Farmers’ endorsement is crucial to conserve biodiversity in permanent grasslands, but the lack of visibility on their economic value is a major obstacle. We studied the production costs (i.e., the cost to produce one Mg of dry matter) and the replacement costs (i.e., the cost to replace grassland fodder with a mixture of wheat, soya and cereal stra...
Grasslands are at the heart of multiple expectations on the part of farmers and society. The objective of this study was to assess the services provided by semi-natural grasslands, and the trade-offs between these services. Starting from a survey of 150 grasslands in the Vosges massif, we selected 58 that have been monitored for 2 consecutive years...
Trees could help to reduce livestock production vulnerability to climate change by providing a fodder resource during periods of drought. Fodder trees are commonly used in tropical and Mediterranean areas, but they remain poorly studied in temperate regions. Previous studies highlighted that leaves of some tree fodder species have nutritive values...
The emergent field of animal linguistics applies linguistics tools to animal data in order to investigate potential linguistic-like properties of their communication. One of these tools is the “Urgency Principle”, a pragmatic principle stating that in an alarm sequence, calls providing information about the nature or location of a threat must come...
Platyrrhini are highly vulnerable to the yellow fever (YF) virus. From 2016 to 2018, the Atlantic Forest of southeast Brazil faced its worst sylvatic YF outbreak in about a century, thought to have killed thousands of primates. It is essential to assess the impact of this epidemic on threatened primate assemblages to design effective conservation s...
Assessing trade-offs between forage production and ecological characteristics delivered by grasslands is a growing concern for stakeholders and scientists. We sampled 50 grasslands from the Vosges Mountains (north-eastern France), and measured the agronomic (forage yield and quality) and biodiversity characteristics of each grassland. We assessed y...
1. Consequences of a decline in pollination function in semi‐natural ecosystems are largely unknown due to variability in pollinator effectiveness, that is, their contribution to pollen deposition alone. While pollination effectiveness has been shown to be related to body size and hairiness of pollinators for some crops, studies encompassing a wide...
Les prairies permanentes ont un intérêt majeur en France : elles assurent la moitié de la production fourragère, accueillent une riche biodiversité, et séquestrent le carbone. Mieux comprendre les déterminants des propriétés agroécologiques, mais aussi leurs compromis, peut aider les agriculteurs, leurs conseillers agricoles et les écologues à valo...
In France, permanent grasslands are associated with agronomic and ecological characteristics: they provide half of overall forage, shelter vegetal and animal species, and store carbon. Increasing our understanding of agroecological characteristic determinants, and the trade-offs between characteristics, could help farmers and advisors to promote hi...
Permanent grasslands produce highly diverse ecosystem goods and services, which need to be easily assessed by decision makers. Naturalists and agronomists classify grasslands in different ways to predict ecological, agronomic and environmental characteristics of the grasslands. However, few studies have compared the prediction abilities of these di...
Il a été possible de classer 252 prairies permanentes du massif vosgien selon 3 typologies (phytosociologique, agronomique et
fonctionnelle). L’étude a comparé les capacités de ces typologies à prédire les propriétés des prairies via l’estimation de 14 propriétés
agronomiques et écologiques. Les résultats montrent que la typologie agronomique seule...
Previous work suggested that titi monkeys Callicebus nigrifrons combine two alarm calls, the A- and B-calls, to communicate about predator type and location. To explore how listeners process these sequences, we recorded alarm call sequences of six free-ranging groups exposed to terrestrial and aerial predator models, placed on the ground or in the...
At the European scale, phytosociological characteristics can be used to identify grasslands that should be preserved. However, phytosociological data do not provide the agronomic information that farmers need. To deal with this issue, an agronomic classification system based on species diversity was developed. Then, functional classification was em...
(Français en dessous)
The aim of this study is to easily assess permanent grassland yields (tDM/ha), production costs (€/ha) and economic performance (€/tDM). We compare assessment capacities of an agronomical classification and a simple classification based on grassland management (mowed/grazed/mixed).
Our results show agronomical classification i...
(Français en dessous) The aim of this study is to easily assess permanent grassland yields (tDM/ha), production costs (€/ha) and economic performance (€/tDM). We compare assessment capacities of an agronomical classification and a simple classification based on grassland management (mowed/grazed/mixed). Our results show agronomical classification i...
Intensification increase permanent grassland yields, but it also increase fodder costs while reducing biodiversity.
Our results show no correlation between fodder cost (€/tonne of dry matter) and botanical richness (species/grassland). However, the potential maximum biodiversity decrease while fodder cost increase.
We conclude permanent grasslands...
Although call sequences have the potential to convey more information than single call utterances, they constitute an under-researched area in the field of animal communication. Black-fronted titi monkeys Callicebus nigrifrons emit A-calls to aerial predators and B-calls to terrestrial predators, and previous work has suggested that the two calls c...
At the European scale, grassland classifications and policies are mainly based on a phytosociological approach. However, agronomists use other classifications, such as agronomical typologies, indicators, models, measurements of forage yield or quality. Grasslands in the Vosges Mountains (north-eastern France, 170 - 1,424 m a.s.l., 7,000 + km2) have...
Many primates produce one type of alarm call to a broad range of events, usually terrestrial predators and non-predatory situations, which raises questions about whether primate alarm calls should be considered ‘functionally referential’. A recent example is black-fronted titi monkeys, Callicebus nigrifrons, which emit sequences of B-calls to terre...
Titi monkeys (Callicebus nigrifrons) produce two acoustically simple alarm calls, the A and B-calls. A-calls functionally refer to threats within or above the canopy, such as raptors and capuchin monkeys. B-calls are given in a broader context, which includes terrestrial predators, when the caller is moving near the forest ground or when disturbed...
During vocal signalling, animals often combine distinct acoustic units into sequences. Studies on the information encoded in such sequences mostly focuses on the unit level, while research on the information conveyed by sequence composition and structure is still in its beginnings. Indeed, the holistic analysis of sequence composition, temporal str...
Primate alarm calls to aerial predators are typically very predator-specific, while alarm calls to terrestrial predators are often also given in non-predatory contexts. However, various studies have demonstrated that some primate call types can be discriminated as context-specific acoustic variants. In titi monkeys, A-calls are emitted to both rapt...
