Criminal violence in Latin American cities is increasing. Meanwhile, with urbanization, greater numbers of people are moving to cities and into the crossfire. What self-protection strategies do residents adopt to keep safe in violent cities? Drawing on qualitative data from Medellín, Colombia, and Monterrey, Mexico, we document the strategies residents use to stay safe. We synthesize insights from studies of civil war, criminal governance, and urban violence to construct an analytical framework to systematically catalog and name these strategies. We posit that the type of violence residents face—indiscriminate or targeted—influences the strategies they pursue. Responding to either the indiscriminate or targeted form, residents employ survival strategies to avoid, withstand, or confront violence. Our research underscores the centrality of agency for residents’ “staying power” amid urban violence.

The eruption of Toba ca. 75 ka was the largest volcanic eruptive event during the Quaternary, and evidence for this eruption is widespread in terrestrial sediment sequences in South Asia as primary and reworked distal ash deposits. Youngest Toba Tuff horizons (YTT) have been widely employed as isochrons to understand and link regional sediment sequences and the evidence for environmental and cultural change in the archaeological records preserved within them. We identify the YTT deposits at Retlapalle, Andhra Pradesh, India, and present the optical ages of the K-feldspar grains recovered from sediments immediately underlying and overlying the tephra horizon. We combine these results with particle size and magnetic susceptibility analyses to establish the depositional conditions of YTT, which indicate that accumulation and reworking ceased by ca. 64 ka. We explore the role of YTT deposits as an isochron for examining the effect of the 75 ka Toba super-eruption, highlighting the need for an independent chronological assessment of YTT before using it as a Late Pleistocene chronological marker in reconstructing South Asian paleo-landscapes and hominin adaptations. Further, our findings support the regional continuity of human occupations within South Asia, spanning the eruption of Toba and the enduring utility of Middle Paleolithic tools.

Examining the ecological consequences of the late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions within biodiversity hotspots is crucial for our understanding of the potential consequences of contemporary extinctions. We present the first multi-species record of spores of coprophilous fungi (SCF) from Monquentiva and the high-Andean forests of Colombia to reconstruct Late Pleistocene and Holocene megafaunal abundance. Fossilised pollen and charcoal are used to examine the consequences of megafaunal declines on the surrounding vegetation and fire activity. Our SCF record indicates the presence of Pleistocene megafauna at least since 30,290 BP, with two waves of megafaunal decline at ca. 22,900 BP and 10,990 BP. At Monquentiva, megafaunal decline in the Early Holocene resulted in transitional non-analogue vegetation, loss of some herbivore-dispersed plant taxa, an encroachment of palatable and woody flora, and a rise in fire activity. Differences with other published South-American records suggest that ecological consequences of megafaunal declines were habitat-specific. Overall, we show that ecosystems in the eastern Colombian Cordillera were highly sensitive to the decline of megafaunal populations. Under the current biodiversity crisis, management and conservation efforts must account for the effects of local herbivore declines on plant dispersal, on fire activity, and the potential loss of ecosystem services.

African rodents of the genus Arvicanthis are presently restricted to sub-Saharan savannas and to the Nile Valley. In contrast, their distribution during the Quaternary included most of northern Africa, leading to the emergence of local fossil species. To date, there have been no comprehensive studies of Arvicanthis populations in northern Africa, neither to clarify their taxonomy nor their paleoecology. The present study aims to explore both morphology and diet of modern and fossil Arvicanthis species using geometric morphometric and dental microwear analyses on first upper molars. The geometric morphometric analysis efficiently discriminates the studied extant and fossil Arvicanthis species and allowed for the identification of probable geographical variations within the A. niloticus group. Although all extant species of the genus Arvicanthis are predominantly grass-eaters, microwear analyses also highlighted diet differences in various modern populations of A. niloticus, as well as paleodiet inferences in the A. arambourgi fossil species, but no clear link between molar size or shape and diet can be established. This work helps set the stage for a complete revision of the fossil remains of Arvicanthis from northern African Quaternary deposits, and for a better understanding of the geographical and temporal morphological variability of this genus in Africa.

The impact of employment protection legislation has been thoroughly analyzed in varied contexts. Most studies highlight the potential harm of the legislation on labor outcomes, although evidence remains inconclusive. However, the literature has focused primarily on ex post impacts, analyzing the regulation’s effect after implementation. This article departs from that analysis to focus on anticipated or ex ante effects of labor regulation. More specifically, we study the role of firms’ expectations in future stricter labor legislation related to employment and income in Peru’s formal and informal labor market. To account for expectations, we used the number of news items related to the approval of a proposed law—the General Labor Law—to increase labor rigidities in Lima’s most important business newspaper. Using the Peruvian labor survey, we find a negative but decreasing relationship between firms’ expectations of a future stricter labor market and employment and average income. We also collect evidence that bigger news items and ones closer to the front page have a negative relationship with formal employment and income.