Accurate identification of sheep is important for achieving precise animal management and welfare farming in large farms. In this study, a sheep face detection method based on YOLOv3 model pruning is proposed, abbreviated as YOLOv3-P in the text. The method is used to identify sheep in pastures, reduce stress and achieve welfare farming. Specifically, in this study, we chose to collect Sunit sheep face images from a certain pasture in Xilin Gol League Sunit Right Banner, Inner Mongolia, and used YOLOv3, YOLOv4, Faster R-CNN, SSD and other classical target recognition algorithms to train and compare the recognition results, respectively. Ultimately, the choice was made to optimize YOLOv3. The mAP was increased from 95.3% to 96.4% by clustering the anchor frames in YOLOv3 using the sheep face dataset. The mAP of the compressed model was also increased from 96.4% to 97.2%. The model size was also reduced to 1/4 times the size of the original model. In addition, we restructured the original dataset and performed a 10-fold cross-validation experiment with a value of 96.84% for mAP. The results show that clustering the anchor boxes and compressing the model using this dataset is an effective method for identifying sheep. The method is characterized by low memory requirement, high-recognition accuracy and fast recognition speed, which can accurately identify sheep and has important applications in precision animal management and welfare farming.

Salicornia europaea L. is a well-known model plant for studying the mechanism of salt tolerance. A substantial decline in the S. europaea population has been observed in the semi-arid steppe of the Mongolian Plateau. The relationship between environmental factors and its population dynamics in the grassland ecosystem remains inadequately investigated. Rhizosphere microbial communities, representing the most direct and influential biological factors affecting plant populations, have received limited research attention in the context of halophytes. Four density treatments of S. europaea (bare land—SEB, low density—SEL, medium density—SEM, and high density—SEH) in a single-factor randomized-block design with five replications were established to evaluate the relationship between rhizosphere soil bacterial communities and environmental factors. The results showed that as the density of S. europaea increased, the soil pH decreased, while available phosphorus increased. Rhizosphere soil bacterial communities associated with S. europaea populations in the saline-alkali wetland were dominated by Proteobacteria, Bacteroidota, Actinobacteria, Gemmatimonadota, and Halobacterota. Notably, the genera Antarcticibacterium, Wenzhouxiangella, BD2-11_terrestrial_groupBD2-11, Halomonas, and Natronorubrum were found to be particularly abundant. The Simpson index of the rhizosphere soil bacterial community in the S. europaea treatments was significantly higher than that in bare land. Soil pH and nitrate nitrogen were the primary environmental drivers of the rhizosphere bacterial community. Overall, the rhizosphere soil’s bacterial diversity in saline wetlands under a high-salt environment was not affected by the decrease in the S. europaea population. S. europaea plays an important role in shaping soil bacterial community structure through its influence on the surrounding soil environment. The cultivation of S. europaea is a phytoremediation strategy to improve soil salinization.

Poa alpigena is a dominant grass species in alpine meadows, which is sensitive to environmental conditions. In this study, we analyzed the characteristics of the anatomical structure of the stems and leaves of Poa alpigena in overgrazed and enclosed conditions in order to determine the dwarfing morphological mechanism associated with overgrazing. The results show that leaf thickness, leaf epidermal thickness, epidermal cell area, and phloem thickness increased with increased grazing intensity (p < 0.05). In contrast, xylem thickness, mesophyll cell area, and guide wall thickness decreased with an increase in grazing intensity (p < 0.05). Mesophyll cell density was relatively unaffected by grazing intensity. Additionally, the plasticity indices of leaf area, upper epidermal cutin layer thickness, and leaf xylem thickness were higher than 0.5. The plasticity indices of stem tube diameter, epidermal cell size, and epidermal cuticle thickness were greater than 0.4. The results of our study indicate that the structural stem and leaf changes in Poa alpigena are induced by the water and mechanical stresses that occur under grazing conditions. Thus, plateau plants adapt to grazing stress by increasing the thickness of their leaves, cuticles, and phloem. The mesophyll cell area, as well as the stem epidermal cell area of Poa alpigena decreased in response to minor variations in grazing intensity, yet overgrazing did not change its density. However, overgrazing induced a shortening of the leaves and stems, indicating that overgrazing has a dwarfing effect on Poa alpigena.