Companion animal foster caregiving: a scoping review exploring animal and caregiver welfare, barriers to caregiver recruitment and retention, and best practices for foster care programs in animal shelters.

Each year, millions of animals enter animal shelters across the United States and are met with a variety of potential stressors that can negatively impact their experience, including noise, confinement, and social isolation. Foster care, a unique form of human-animal interaction, is increasingly understood to be an effective tool for improving welfare by allowing animals to escape the stressors of the shelter, providing an environment that allows for greater social interaction, and offering opportunities for improved health and behavior. This review includes 42 published articles, reports, master's theses, and doctoral dissertations that have previously evaluated companion animal foster care programs.

The Influence of Brief Outing and Temporary Fostering Programs on Shelter Dog Welfare.

Human interaction is one of the most consistently effective interventions that can improve the welfare of shelter-living dogs. Time out of the kennel with a person has been shown to reduce physiological measures of stress as can leaving the shelter for a night or more in a foster home. In this study, we assessed the effects of brief outings and temporary fostering stays on dogs' length of stay and outcomes.

Overexpression of REDUCED WALL ACETYLATION C increases xylan acetylation and biomass recalcitrance in Populus.

Plant lignocellulosic biomass, i.e. secondary cell walls of plants, is a vital alternative source for bioenergy.

Newly identified sex chromosomes in the Sphagnum (peat moss) genome alter carbon sequestration and ecosystem dynamics.

Peatlands are crucial sinks for atmospheric carbon but are critically threatened due to warming climates. Sphagnum (peat moss) species are keystone members of peatland communities where they actively engineer hyperacidic conditions, which improves their competitive advantage and accelerates ecosystem-level carbon sequestration. To dissect the molecular and physiological sources of this unique biology, we generated chromosome-scale genomes of two Sphagnum species: S.