Decisions, Decisions, Decisions: An Ethnographic Study of Researcher Discretion in Practice.

This paper is a study of the decisions that researchers take during the execution of a research plan: their researcher discretion. Flexible research methods are generally seen as undesirable, and many methodologists urge to eliminate these so-called 'researcher degrees of freedom' from the research practice. However, what this looks like in practice is unclear.

The effect of phenotyping, adult selection, and mating strategies on genetic gain and rate of inbreeding in black soldier fly breeding programs.

Background: The aim of this study was to compare genetic gain and rate of inbreeding for different mass selection breeding programs with the aim of increasing larval body weight (LBW) in black soldier flies. The breeding programs differed in: (1) sampling of individuals for phenotyping (either random over the whole population or a fixed number per full sib family), (2) selection of adult flies for breeding (based on an adult individual's phenotype for LBW or random from larvae preselected based on LBW), and (3) mating strategy (mating in a group with unequal male contributions or controlled between two females and one male). In addition, the numbers of phenotyped and preselected larvae were varied.

Combined mechanistic and genetic modelling to benchmark body reserve traits as proxies of dairy cows' lifetime efficiency in grass-based production systems.

Improving lifetime lactation efficiency of dairy cows by selection is difficult due to the complexity of this trait and the existence of genotype-by-environment interactions. This study aimed at assessing the relevance of traits derived from body reserves as lifetime efficiency indicators under contrasting nutritional environments. Given the absence of large-scale datasets covering a panel of feeding regimes, phenotypes were simulated for populations of 20 000 dairy cows using a mechanistic bioenergetic model.

Emphasis on resilience in dairy cattle breeding: Possibilities and consequences.

This study aimed to investigate dairy cattle breeding goals with more emphasis on resilience. We simulated the consequences of increasing weight on resilience indicators and an assumed true resilience trait (TR). Two environments with different breeding goals were simulated to represent the variability of production systems across Europe.

Short- and long-term consequences of collaboration between Northern European Red dairy and dual-purpose cattle.

In Northern European countries, a great variety of Red cattle populations exists which can be broadly categorized in two groups: specialized dairy and dual-purpose breeds. Collaboration between these breeds (i.e.