The last 85,000 years were characterized by high climate and environmental variability on the Yucatán Peninsula. Heinrich stadials are examples of abrupt climate transitions that involved shifts in regional temperatures and moisture availability. Thus, they serve as natural experiments to evaluate the contrasting responses of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. We used ostracodes and pollen preserved in a 75.9-m-long sediment core (PI-6, ~85 ka) recovered from Lake Petén Itzá, Guatemala, to assess the magnitude and velocity of community responses. Ostracodes are sensitive to changes in water temperature and conductivity. Vegetation responds to shifts in temperature and the ratio of evaporation to precipitation. Ostracodes display larger and more rapid community changes than does vegetation. Heinrich Stadial 5-1 (HS5-1) was cold and dry and is associated with lower ostracode and vegetation species richness and diversity. In contrast, the slightly warmer and dry conditions during HS6 and HS5a are reflected in higher ostracode species richness and diversity. Our paleoecological study revealed the greatest ecological turnover for ostracodes occurred from 62.5 to 51.0 ka; for pollen, it was at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition. Future studies should use various climate and environmental indicators from lake and marine sediment records to further explore late glacial paleoclimate causes and effects in the northern neotropics.

This article investigates food security and well-being in the context of “development-forced displacement” in Ethiopia. In the lower Omo, a large hydroelectric dam and plantation schemes have forced people to cede communal lands to the state and business speculators, and indigenous communities have been targeted for resettlement in new consolidated villages. The authors carried out a food access survey in new villages and in communities not yet subjected to villagization and complemented this with ethnographic research carried out over a period of four years. The results of the two methodological approaches were inconsistent. The survey data suggest that household food access was poor in both places but better in villagization sites than in the other communities. The ethnographic research, however, suggests that village settlers were unable to feed themselves from the irrigated plots they were allotted and were therefore dependent on food aid. They spoke of indignity, bodily discomfort, and the severance of meaningful social relations. This article discusses the contrast between the information generated by the different research methods and asks how this tension relates to two major narratives about development: development as a process through which the state actualizes a national dream, and development as a process that creates affluence for some by impoverishing others.