Do prisoners have the right to create a family? A comparative approach of the prisoners' access to assisted reproduction in the United Kingdom, France and Belgium

Do prisoners have the right to create a family?

A comparative approach of the prisoners' access to assisted reproduction in the United Kingdom, France and Belgium Ariane Amado is a fellow researcher in the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, Centre d'Histoire judiciaire of the University of Lille.

Can everyone create their own family whether naturally or via medical techniques? That's the question we are asking when exploring access to assisted reproduction for prisoners. The World Health Organisation states that around 48 million couples and 186 million people are impacted by infertility in the world. 1 The opening of assisted reproduction to same sex couples and single women in many European countries makes it a very central and valuable technology for many families bearing in mind that it is even more complicated to conceive for detainees than for the rest of the population due to imprisonment. 2 Considering imprisonment strips detainees from their legal rights, it should not deprive them from their right to maintain family links and, by extension, their right to create a family. Hence, we have to envisage the possibility for detainees to access assisted reproduction as well as the rest of the general population.

Methodology of the research.

This article is the result of a research in Comparative Prison Law and penal policies that I conducted in the Université libre de Bruxelles as part of a project funded by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique and coordinated by Professor Damien Scalia. 3 We studied the academic literature on assisted reproduction and the very little policy guidance which exist in the three countries (France, Belgium and the UK) on the specific topic of access to assisted reproduction by prisoners.

We aimed to collect empirical data in order to understand how the lack of written norms would impact the practical access to these technologies by detainees. Unfortunately, we encountered many difficulties. Indeed, most of the interviewees had nothing to say on that matter and were not even aware that detainees were allowed to access assisted reproduction. Moreover, we struggled to be granted access to conduct our research in prison in the three studied countries. Thankfully, we were able to access complaints to the French National Preventive Mechanism (NPM), the Contrôleur général des lieux de privation de liberté, which helped us to understand better the difficulties prisoners were facing. We also interviewed two prison governors, one juge de l'application des peines 4 and one Criminal Lawyer in France. As for Belgium, we interviewed three organisations working in the prison field, four probation services and one prosecutor in the Brussels region. We managed to get information directly from interviewing staff at hospitals and clinics (only two hospitals in Brussels replied to us, unfortunately providing no conclusive answers). We were not granted access to English and Welsh prison governors and directors. However, we received helpful answers from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which is the competent authority in the field of assisted reproduction in the UK. Notwithstanding those tremendous barriers, this article will attempt to provide insights into the obstacles that detainees face when wanting recourse to assisted reproduction.

The Law of assisted reproduction in France, Belgium and the United Kingdom.

According to Article L. 2141-1 of the French Code de la Santé publique, "medically assisted procreation refers to clinical and biological practices allowing in vitro conception, conservation of gametes, germ tissue and embryos, embryo transfer and artificial insemination". This is also the definition which is given in Section 1 of the As for the UK, single women can have recourse to intrauterine insemination (also known as artificial insemination) and any couple is able to recourse to infertility treatment. 5 These medical processes are generally lengthy and require constant medical monitoring. It is therefore not entirely unreasonable to imagine that a detainee on remand, who has started an assisted reproductive process with their partner prior to their imprisonment, would wish to continue it during their time in custody. Similarly, a detainee serving a sentence might wish to start this medical process during their time in jail, whether or not they have a partner or if their partner is also detained. Hence, this matter deserves consideration.

Research question and outline of the article.

Studies have already been conducted on the inequality for certain marginalised people to access fertility treatments. For example, Michelle Weldon-Johns applied Schiek's intersectional approach of Discrimination Law around the three nodes of "'Race', Gender and Disability" when examining the access to assisted reproduction. 6 According to Weldon-Johns, single women, people with special needs or ethnic and religious minorities seem to encounter various discriminations when accessing assisted reproduction techniques. 7 This is also the case for people who are imprisoned. Exploring the access of assisted reproduction technologies by detainees enables us to examine the gap between the common principles of Family Law and their application to the prison environment. Moreover, opening assisted reproduction technologies to detainees raises an ethical question in light of its moral concern: can a detainee have the right to found a family? While the existence of this right has been ambiguously recognised by the European Court of Human Rights (I), its respect in domestic law meets numerous legal, financial, and material obstacles rendering it almost impossible (II). In light of the prisoners' frequent stigma as "bad parents", 8 our research aims to question the extent of State intervention in the private lives of marginalised populations (III).

I.

Questioning the prisoners' right to create a family

The loose protection of Article 8 of the ECHR. Article 8 of the ECHR protects the private and family life of all persons, whether or not they are detained. 9 Imposing a double obligation on Member States, the authorities must not only ensure that the prisoners' family life is respected, but must also refrain themselves from interfering in it. 10 Maintaining the detainees' family ties is also part of the scope of Article 8 of the ECHR, which explains that public authorities must protect the relationship that prisoners have with their children. 11 In the Grand Chamber case Dickson v. United Kingdom (4 th of December 2007), the ECHR found the UK in breach of Article 8 for not allowing a detainee to recourse to assisted reproduction [START_REF] Dickson V. United | Gd ch. 4 th of[END_REF] . In this case, one of the applicants was a detainee who had been denied access to assisted reproduction for which he claimed a breach of Article 8 and Article 12 of the ECHR. As sexual intercourse is prohibited in prison in the UK, unsupervised visits are not permitted. [START_REF] Stevens | Sexual Activity in British Men's Prisons: A Culture of Denial[END_REF] Given the length of his prison sentence and his wife's advanced age, the applicant alleged that they would be unable to start a family other than by means of assisted procreation. This application was refused on the grounds that the absence of a parent for a long period of time would have a negative impact on the child, as the best interests of the unborn child was at stake. The Grand Chamber of the ECHR found the UK in breach of Article 8. While the Strasbourg judges recognised that the prohibition of unsupervised visits in prison should be left at the Member states' discretion, 14 they affirmed that this prohibition could not be such as to prevent a person from founding a family. If the interest of the child was the very object of the balancing exercise when measuring the interference with Article 8, it could not be used to deprive people of their right to procreate -especially as the second applicant was not imprisoned and could take care of the child alone while awaiting the end of her husband's prison sentence. 15 At first, this case seems to reinforce prisoners' right to access assisted procreation under the scope of Article 8. However, on closer look, does this case really offer prisoners the right to found a family? Considering the very specific circumstances of the case, it is not possible to assert the existence of such a European right. Would this case apply to France, where prison rules allow prisoners to see their relatives in unsupervised visits? In the Dickson case, the applicants did not allege any infertility or serious genetic diseases. They were questioning the very impossibility, under English law, to start a family while serving a long sentence in prison without being eligible to release on temporary licence. Indeed, the Strasbourg judges made very clear that the refusal to authorise assisted procreation had to be assessed in the light of the lack of unsupervised visits. Consequently, this case does not confer to prisoners an absolute right to create a family under Article 8 of the ECHR.

II.

Assessing the prisoners' access to assisted reproduction

A. Legal obstacles

The mediocre penitentiary health system -Belgium. As far as Belgium is concerned, the healthcare system in prison is still a penitentiary system independent from the national one for the rest of the population. 16 Practically, this means that detainees are being treated differently to the rest of the people, with different means and separate doctors. As a result, detainees face a clear discrimination compared to other citizens since their medical treatments are extremely poor, mediocre and inadequate, even for daily basic health emergencies. 17 Therefore, when I interviewed members of the Prison Service (Direction Générale des établissements pénitentiaires), organisations and probation officers (services d'aide aux justiciables), most of them had never heard of a female or male detainee trying to access assisted reproduction in prison. The only case that one organisation had seen was where a female detainee wanted to freeze her eggs during her sentence so to preserve her fertility. However, she confided to members of the organisation that she was feeling very lost about this wish as she had nobody to turn to or enquire about it with. The organisation had managed to facilitate an appointment with a gynaecologist but were unsure about the outcome. Indeed, it was interesting to observe that most interviewees were very surprised, if not shocked, by our questions as they explained the healthcare system was so poor that it was already tremendously difficult for detainees to get basic treatment for their health conditions, let alone for non-emergency procedures In that case, it seems that access to assisted reproduction is very far from being possible for prisoners, leaving them unable to exercise their civil right to found a family.

The lack of information in France.

In France, there exist no specific protocols like for HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS). This makes it very difficult for detainees to understand the process to access assisted reproduction. The NPM have received six complaints since 2011, some of which were requesting information. According to Article L. 2142-1 of Code de la santé publique, "biological activities for assisted procreation may only be carried out in accredited medical biology laboratories". As a result, these activities cannot be accessed within prisons, although an ambulatory care consultation unit is part of each prison. No specific prison rule or protocol has been enacted on that subject, which leaves no choice but to apply the rules on exceptional authorisations to leave and medical extractions. Aside from prisoners eligible for temporary release, which may also be left at the discretion of judges, 18 individuals may be able to access assisted reproduction, whether on remand or 16 Article 87 and seq. of the Loi de Principe du 12 janvier 2005 confirmed that the prisoners' healthcare had to be equivalent to the rest of the population. Hence they were entitled to public healthcare. However, the law never came into force due to a lack of public budget. convicted, through two mechanisms: escorted authorisation to leave (autorisation de sortie sous escorte) or medical extraction.

B. Material obstacles

The complicated regime of exceptional escorts in France. Accused individuals are not authorised to leave the prison while on remand except in the event of a medical extraction or after having obtained an escorted authorisation to leave. Provided for in Articles 148-5 and 723-6 of the Code de procedure pénale, an escorted authorisation to leave is defined as a special and exceptional authorisation, issued by the competent authority, to allow individuals to attend a particular event. Individuals are then escorted by prison staff or police staff to the dedicated place. Although the grounds for issuing an escorted authorisation to leave permit had never been defined, the Chambre de l'application des peines stated that only "a seriously ill or deceased relative" constitutes a reasonable motive. 19 It would therefore seem that assisted reproduction would not be included in this case law.

With regards to medical extractions which are open to remand and convicted prisoners, it could encompass sperm donation or in vitro fertilisation. Medical extraction is the transfer of a detainee to a health institution for a consultation, a medical examination that cannot be provided within the establishment, or a hospitalisation. 20 However, this measure must necessarily take place in the local public healthcare centre, which may render it very difficult if that particular centre does not carry out assisted reproduction techniques as provided for in Article L. 2142-1 of the Code de la santé publique. 21 Will a sperm donation or an artificial insemination be considered as any of the above motives determined by Article D. 396 of the Code de procédure pénale?

Article L. 2141-10 of the Code de la santé publique specifies that applicants for assisted reproduction must first undergo several "specific interviews [...] with one or more doctors and other health professionals from the centre's multidisciplinary clinicobiological medical team". The process is very long and requires a substantial material investment on the part of the applicant. At the same time, medical extractions are extremely costly to the State as they require several police officers or prison guards and a specific vehicle for the entire time of the extraction. Prison medical extractions are also very difficult to match with the specificity of some medical techniques required, such as in vitro fecundation which requires hormonal treatments, ovaries stimulation and punction based on the woman's cycle hence, meaning appointments often being changed at the last minute according that person's cycle. It is even more complicated considering that prisoners are normally never informed of their medical extraction prior to the day it happens, for security reasons to avoid any escape plan on their behalf. The interviews I conducted with lawyers, judges and the NPM lead me to understand that some people who attempted to access assisted reproduction from prison did not get authorised to be extracted on the basis that there were too many medical appointments involved.

C. Financial obstacles

Specific protocol to access fertility treatment in prison -UK.

In HMPPS has a specific protocol to grant access to assisted reproduction techniques to prisoners. 22 The enactment of a specific protocol indicates there to be an interest among the prison population to access assisted reproduction. It also enables the prison population to have better access to information via this specific protocol, in contrast to the French and Belgian systems which do not have such facilitated access to information. However, difficulty still lies within the existing process. Indeed, it specifies that an application to access assisted reproduction must be made to HMPPS, who will evaluate it on a national level before deciding whether to approve it. It is hard to understand the criteria being used to evaluate such applications since there is no published information about them. However, we can already conclude that there is another level of complexity added to the generally lengthy and costly process for assisted reproduction techniques.

The impossible financial burden of fertility treatment -UK. The first condition set by HMPPS' protocol states that all costs of the various techniques rest on the prisoner, as this is the case for the rest of the population. The National Health Service does not nationally cover the costs of the assisted reproduction techniques since local Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) decide who is eligible to be funded for access, and who is not, across the UK. 23 Wales, as well as Northern Ireland and Scotland, make their own decisions regarding funding assisted reproduction. 24 Therefore, it could very well be that from one prison to another, depending on the detainees' CCG, their artificial insemination or in vitro fertilisation may not be funded. One round of in vitro fertilisation costs around £5,000, aside from the hormonal treatments or the medical appointments, and people generally need to go through several attempts for it to be successful. Consequently, the cost of those techniques could amount to a tremendous amount of money for the detainee. In addition, the prisoner must also pay for staff resources (for example escort staff), transport (whether it be a prison vehicle or private hire vehicle) and, where applicable, a risk assessment of the hospital/fertility clinic. 25 Finally, fertility services are sometimes not provided to women aged 35 years or older, depending on the local CCG, which may render it even more impossible for some female detainees. 26 For those reasons, is seems hard to imagine that many detainees are able to access assisted reproduction in the UK.

III.

Examining the social stigma of prisoners as future "bad parent"

The authorities' discretion in prisoner's ability to create a family. Whether it be for medical extraction or temporary release, the granting of such measure depends on the competent authority's approval which very often will be shaped by moral and ethical subjective points of view about whether prisoners are "good parents". In all three countries, approval also depends on the specifics of fertility services use -whether the English CCG's assessment to allow funding of the technique, or the English, French and Belgian possibility for health institutions to refuse patients according to certain criteria. Some of the criteria involve the welfare of the child (including the need of that child to have supportive parenting) and of any other child who may be affected by the birth, as the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority make very clear. 27 Indeed, in Belgium, article 5 of the Loi du 6 juillet 2007 affirms the fertility institutions' clause of conscience in relation to allowing applicants to receive any kind of fertility services. Moreover, the hospitals and clinics I interviewed in Belgium explained that they would need to run an assessment of the incarcerated parent's criminal background to determine if it could have an "incidence on their parenting ability" before allowing the application to proceed ("une incidence sur leur parentalité"). As for France, in addition to the aforementioned practical difficulties , the few complaints that have been made to the NPM indicate that hospitals and clinics may hide behind technical problems, to simply refuse to allow prisoners to start a fertility process, without trying to organise it in the first place. Others refuse to have handcuffed prisoners accompanied by police officers in front of other patients. In one case, a prisoner and their spouse could not get an unsupervised visit because there was too much demand for the number of unsupervised visit units. As they wished to conceive a child, they applied for the usage of an assisted reproduction technique which was refused by the fertility hospital doctor because the couple had to encounter fertility issues first, and to try for at least a year to conceive naturally, before applying for fertility services. Neither of the two conditions were satisfied by the couple. As for the Dickson case, this argument could be considered fallacious since prisoners are de facto in an unequal position compared to others when attempting to conceive naturally. Even though the law has changed since that specific doctor's answer (the infertility requirement no longer exists), one might conclude that authorities sometimes use legal arguments to mask ideological denials of Human rights. In an interview with a juge d'application des peines in France, we were explicitly told that she would never allow any prisoner temporary release for an assisted reproduction appointment in any circumstances on moral and ethical grounds.

Balancing the best interests of the unborn child and the prisoners' right to create a family?

The reasons given in the ECHR's Dickson case already shed some light on the grounds on which such applications could be refused. In Dickson v. United Kingdom (2007), the English government justified its refusal to allow a prisoner access to assisted reproduction on the harmful effect that the parent's separation would have on the welfare of the unborn child. In response, the Strasbourg judges considered the welfare of the child to still be respected because one of the two parents would be physically present to take care of the them. 28 On the basis of this reasoning, the principle of the best interests of the unborn child could justify State interventionism in the family life of prisoners. It is even more surprising that one is dealing with a hypothesis of an unborn child since the child is yet to be conceived. State interventionism echoes the criminological theories according to which prisoners, and particularly female detainees, are stigmatised as 'bad parents'. 29 As a possible drift in the interpretation of this principle by judges, the best interests of the child could be diverted from its original meaning to control the births of marginalised groups of people, such as detainees.

  Human Fertilisation and Embryology Acts (HFA) 1990 and 2008 to be applied in the UK and in article 2(a) of Belgian Loi du 6 juillet 2007 relative à la procréation médicalement assistée et à la destination des embryons surnuméraires et des gametes.

	The new Article L. 2141-2-11 of Code de la santé publique recently opened up the scope of assisted
	reproduction to single women and same sex female couples. As for Belgium, Article 4 §1 of the Loi du
	6 juillet 2007 enables any woman below 45 years of age to recourse to in vitro fertilisation (embryos
	implantation or gametes insemination).

WHO, facts sheet, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/infertility

For example, in December 2021, there were 75 881 male prisoners and

female prisoners in England & Wales: Ministry of Justice, Prisons data, https://data.justice.gov.uk/prisons. At the same time, on the 1 st of December 2021, there were 67 759 male prisoners and 2233 female prisoners in France: Ministère de la justice, statistiques pénales de la population écrouée, http://www.justice.gouv.fr/prison-et-reinsertion-10036/leschiffres-clefs-10041/statistiques-mensuelles-de-la-population-detenue-et-ecrouee-22209.html.3 The research project is called "Building a family across imprisonment" and it focused on the Law of union and filiation in prisons in France, Belgium and the United Kingdom. This research started in April 2021 and will end in April 2023.4 The juge de l'application des peines is the magistrate in charge of the sentencing pathway of a sentenced individual in France.

Chap. Paris, 10 juillet

[START_REF] Stevens | Sexual Activity in British Men's Prisons: A Culture of Denial[END_REF], n° 1704/190, AJ pénal, 2017, p. 454, obs. Herzog-Evans M.. 20 Art. D. 391 and ss. of the Code de procédure pénale. 21 Art. R. 6111-27 of the Code de santé publique. 22 Prisoner Applications to Access Fertility Treatment Policy Statement, available on the Freedom of expression request website, https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/801152/response/1910980/attach/html/4/Policy%20Statement%20Pri soner%20Applications%20to%20Access%20Fertility%20Treatment%20March%202021.pdf.html

BPAS, BPAS investigation into the IVF postcode lottery: an examination of CCG policy for the provision of fertility services report, 2020, https://www.bpas.org/media/3369/bpas-fertility-ivf-postcode-lottery-report.pdf

See footnote 23.

Ministry of Justice, Disclosure team, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request on the access to fertility treatment for serving prisoners, https://prisons.org.uk/prisonerfertilityw.pdf

See footnote 23.

In the UK, cf. Guidance Note 8 of the HFEA Code of Practice, pp. 99 -103.

[START_REF] Dickson V. United | Gd ch. 4 th of[END_REF], §76.

Cardi C., op.cit., 2009; Codd H., In the Shadow of Prison, Families, Imprisonment and Criminal Justice, Oxon, Routledge, 2008, p. 131; Hannah-Moffat K., op.cit., 2007; Cardi C., op.cit., 2007; Rostaing C., (1997). La relation carcérale : Identités et rapports sociaux dans les prisons de femmes, PUF, Coll. Le lien social; Carlen P.,(1983). Women's Imprisonment, A study in social control.Routledge and Kegan, p. 155.


Luca Izzo
email: luca.izzo@nbi.ku.dk

Paolo Molaro

Piercarlo Bonifacio

Gabriele Cescutti

• Massimo

Della Valle

Pierluigi Selvelli

M Della Valle

Classical novae with CUBES

Among the main science cases that have motivated the proposal of CUBES, a new high-resolution spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory, there is the study and the characterisation of the nucleosynthesis of beryllium. Classical novae have been proposed since the '70s as one of the main factories of lithium in the Galaxy, but this hypothesis has been demonstrated on empirical basis only recently thanks to the direct identification of lithium in V1369 Cen and through the observations of the resonance transition of 7 Be II, the 7 Li parent, at 313.0 nm in the near-UV range. CUBES is then the ideal instrument to quantify the amount of 7 Be and therefore of 7 Li produced by the different novae types hosted in the different components of the Milky Way and also in its nearby satellite galaxies. As important by-product of high resolution spectroscopic observa-

tions obtained with CUBES, there are the study of the properties of nova ejecta abundances, the shocks evolution in novae and their connection with the high-energy emission observed in these transients, from satellites as Fermi and Swift.

Keywords nuclear reactions • nucleosynthesis • abundances -stars: novae

Introduction

Classical novae (CNe) originate in interacting binary systems composed by a primary white dwarf (WD) that accretes matter from a late-type main sequence, or a red giant companion [1]. The accreted gas piles up onto the WD surface until thermo-nuclear reactions ignite [2]. The following production of unstable e + -isotopes provides the fuel for the expansion of the external layers into the interstellar medium and then contributing to its enrichment [3]. In the '70s, it was proposed that, during the thermo-nuclear runaway (TNR), CNe could form lithium through the formation of the 7 Be isotope from the 3 He (α,γ) 7 Be reaction [4,5]. This isotope decays indeed into 7 Li via electron capture with a half-life time decay of ∼ 53 days [6]. The study of the processes that lead to the production of lithium in the Universe, and its evolution, is one of the hot topics of modern astrophysics, both for cosmology [7] and for the chemical evolution of the Galaxy [8][9][10][11]. The present lithium abundance, A(Li)∼3. 3 [12], as measured from meteorites or from young T Tauri stars, is a factor of four larger than the BBN primordial value, A(Li)∼2.7 [7] and one order of magnitude larger than the abundance observed in old metal-poor stars [13,14]. Then, a Galactic source is required to explain the observed overabundance, and it is then crucial to look for the 7 Be/ 7 Li features in the early phase spectra of CNe to confirm them as lithium factories in our Galaxy.

The identification of 7 Be in nova spectra

The time-scale of a CN outburst mainly depends on the mass density of the ejecta and its expanding velocity [15], which in turn are a proxy for the underlying WD mass [16]. Based on the above information and on the time-scale of the beryllium decay, our search for 7 Be- 7 Li features must focus on the epochs immediately after the maximum brightness of the nova outburst, when the ejecta is still cool and optically thick. A relatively high cadence monitoring will allow to identify the nova composition and its kinematics from the analysis of the evolution of P-Cygni absorption line profiles, originating from the nova ejecta emission. This timeline generally corresponds to 1-2 weeks after the outburst for very fast CNe, to two-three months for slow outbursts. However, despite CN spectra have been observed for almost a hundred years, it was only in recent times that we have been able to search for 7 Be/Li evidences in CN spectra, in particular in the near-UV range where the resonance line of the 7 Be II 313.0 nm is observed, thanks to the use of advanced highresolution spectrographs, such as the proposed Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph (CUBES) [17,18] for the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. The first identifications of 7 Be II in CN spectra have indeed been reported using specific spectrographs mounted on 8-meter class telescopes, and that are capable to observe the near-UV range, such as the High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS) at the SUBARU telescope at Hawaii, US, and the Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) currently operating at the VLT [19,20].

A monitoring program is then necessary to quantify the Li yield from CNe. Since 2015 we have started a target-of-opportunity (ToO) program at the VLT to observe the outburst of bright novae with the UVES instrument [20]. A ToO program is necessary, given the transient nature of this class of astrophysical sources: we have been able to identify the P-Cygni absorptions for both the doublet components of the 7 Be II 313.0 nm feature in the early spectra of fast and slow novae [20][21][22], see as an example in Fig. 1 the recent detection in V6595 Sgr [23]. We have monitored the spectral evolution until the 7 Be features resulted unaffected by saturation effects. The 7 Be abundance is estimated by comparison with the resonance Ca II H,K lines. Calcium is not synthesised in the TNR and provides an estimate for the 7 Be, or 7 Li, synthesized in the TNR of log N (BeII)/N (HI) + 12 = 7.38 ± 0.49 [23]. Using these yields, chemical abundance simulations of the evolution of lithium in our Galaxy suggest that CNe can account for a large fraction of the lithium observed in the Milky Way [24,25,10,9]. However, the over-abundance of lithium estimated in CN outbursts are also in disagreement (by a factor of ∼ 10 in N(Li)) with the expectations from theoretical simulations of CN explosions: while these still confirm the main role played by CNe as main factories of lithium in the Galaxy, at the same time they do not reproduce the observed lithium yield value using different nova models and accreted matter composition onto the primary WD [25]. On the other hand, recent and more accurate Galactic chemical evolution simulations that take into account the formation and evolution of binary systems giving rise to CNe explosions, are in agreement with the yield inferred from observations [26]. Consequently, more data, and of high quality, are still needed to: 1) increase the current statistics of events in the Galaxy and nearby systems (being currently composed of 12 Galactic and two SMC novae [23]), to infer a more accurate lithium yield by building a statistically-significant nova sample, and then solve the "tension" between the observational and the theoretical results; 2) to characterize the different CN progenitor populations in terms of their lithium yield (see also below); and 3) to verify if ionization effects and line saturation [27,28] can have an important role in the lithium yield estimate, thanks to a better signal-to-noise value (>> 50) in the 300-400 nm range; detailed analysis made with the 1-dim CLOUDY code have excluded this possibility in some events [23], but more detailed spectral synthesis models that takes into account 3-dim effects, non-local thermodynamic equilibrium and the effects of ejecta inhomogeneities must be used to observed spectra in order to provide a more accurate modelling and lithium abundance inference. Fig. 1 The recent detection of 7 Be II in V6595 Sgr [23], compared with other absorption lines in the nova ejecta.

An important, and yet unexplored field, is also represented by the characterization of CN populations in the Milky Way. There is nowadays a clear evidence that CNe originates from two, or maybe more, progenitor populations: the main indication comes from the evidence that fast novae are more concentrated on the Galactic plane while slow novae are observed also at higher Galactic latitudes [15]. The speed class is mainly driven by the ejected mass [16], with fast novae characterised by smaller expelled masses, and then more massive progenitor WDs, than slow novae. This result could have important implications for the chemical enrichment of different regions of the MW: recent simulations suggest that CNe could be the main factories of lithium for the thin disk component of the Milky Way [9]. The identification of a massive ONe progenitor WD is generally associated with the presence of bright forbidden lines of neon, which are visible in the wavelength range 330-390 nm, which is available to CUBES. We still lack a more complete sample of Galactic novae at high spectral resolution to understand the properties of nova progenitors, if these can be ascribed to a different ejecta composition/metallicity, or to other properties [15], and their relationship with lithium production. All this can be accomplished with future near-UV spectrographs, such as CUBES.

The recent 7 Be detection in CNe observed in nearby local galaxies, such as the two Magellanic clouds [29] has also confirmed the important role of CNe as lithium factories in galaxies that are characterised by a metal poor stellar population and with an unresolved lithium enrichment problem [30]. CUBES at the VLT will definitely allow to investigate the near-UV spectral region for CNe in the nearby galaxies such as the Magellanic clouds (where CNe peak at V ∼ 11 -12 mag), and pushing our search to fainter events with V ∼ 16 mag, given its more than> ten-fold flux sensitivity compared to UVES. We have indeed simulated the Day 1.6 spectrum of the recurrent nova RS Oph (Molaro et al. submitted), see also Fig. 2, using the CUBES exposure time calculator software [31], and the high-resolution mode, obtaining a signal-tonoise of ∼120 using an exposure time which is ∼ 1/10 the one used for the UVES spectrum. The high spectral resolution (R ∼ 22,000, corresponding to a velocity resolution of ∼ 12 km/s) provided by CUBES will clearly allow us to identify and measure the properties of the 7 Be features in CNe, and disentangle the doublet components, which are separated by ∼ 62 km/s. Consequently, the lower spectral resolution compared with UVES does not limit our science goals, being high enough to distinguish narrow lines in the ejecta of CNe. This is clearly evident in our simulation of the Day 1.6 spectrum of RS Oph, which has been corrected for the telluric O3 Huggins bands [32]. To this purpose, we used the E2E CUBES simulator described in [31]. The results of our simulation are shown in Fig. 2, where it is clearly shown the potential of CUBES in detecting and reconstructing the line profile of the 7 Be II absorption feature, as well as to identify narrow metal lines during the early stages of a CN outburst. The wavelength coverage provided by CUBES is ideal for this purpose: so far, 7 Be abundance has been measured using Ca II H&K lines as reference, and both lines are visible in the wavelength range provided by CUBES. Last, while a flux calibration precision of less than 5% is required for late nebular epochs, when from the analysis of emission lines we will infer some physical properties of the ejecta like the abundance and ejected mass,, for the early phases it is not required, given that to estimate relative abundances we only need equivalent width measurements, which are not strictly dependent on the level of the flux calibration.

3 Further insights on nova phenomenology with CUBES.

An interesting by-product from the monitoring of CNe with the spectral resolution provided by CUBES is the characterisation of the abundance pattern derived from narrow absorption lines of heavy elements observed during the bright optically thick phases of CNe, also named THEA (transient heavy element absorptions - [33]). The study and the abundance characterisation of these features in the near-UV range can definitely light on their origin (if associated with the progenitor WD or from the secondary companion), their evolution within the first days/weeks of a nova outburst, how they relate with the new proposed paradigm for nova explosions [34], and finally to check if the components where these transitions take origin include lithium/beryllium.

Only a high-cadence follow-up program will permit to study the dynamics of the ejecta and its correlation with the high-energy radiation recently reported by gamma-ray detectors [35]. The energetic emission was found to be correlated with rebrightenings observed in the optical light curves as well as with the simultaneous appearance of additional higher velocity components in the spectra [36]. This evidence supported the proposal of a new scenario for the CN explosions, characterised by the presence of multiple ejecta components that interact with previously expelled gas, thus producing the observed shocked emission [34,37].

Conclusions

High-resolution spectrographs with near-UV capabilities opened a new era for the study of the TNR in CN. Multi-wavelength observations have provided evidence for shocks, aspherical ejecta and particle acceleration. The possibility to combine these observations with the high-resolution at optical and near-UV wavelengths with CUBES will be relevant in understanding the origin of the high-energy radiation and of the shocked emission. At the same time, CUBES will be one of the few spectrographs that will allow to study the abundance of the 7 Be II and therefore shed a definitive light on the role of CNe as main lithium factories in the MW and in the Local Group galaxies. The upper green curve corresponds to the telluric correction for the O 3 Huggins bands, derived from HD149757. The orange curve is the result of the correction for the Huggins bands from the simulated observed spectrum: note how the absorption feature associated with 7 Be II still persists in the corrected spectrum, while other "fake" absorptions disappear, being originated in O 3 telluric features. To test the quality of the CUBES simulations, we have measured a pseudo equivalent width for the 7 Be II feature of pEW Be,C = 1.043 ± 0.133 Å (SNR ∼ 120 for a 3s exposure) while from UVES we got pEW Be,U = 1.065 ± 0.086 Å .

Fig. 2 (

 2 Fig.2(Upper panel) The spectrum of the Be star HD149757 as observed by CUBES (blue curve) using the dedicated E2E code[31], and used for the estimate of the O 3 correction (green curve). The orange curve corresponds to the stellar continuum used for the estimate of the O 3 bands. Narrow stellar/interstellar features have been opportunely excluded using a smoothing median filter on the final O 3 correction spectrum. (Lower panel) The simulated spectrum of the recurrent nova RS Oph on Day 1.6 as if it were observed by CUBES (blue curve). The original spectrum was observed with UVES, and it was given as input of the E2E code. The 7 Be II feature in the nova ejecta would have been clearly detected also with CUBES (gray mark), including several other narrower absorptions originating in the interaction of the nova ejecta with the secondary red giant wind(Molaro et al. submitted). The upper green curve corresponds to the telluric correction for the O 3 Huggins bands, derived from HD149757. The orange curve is the result of the correction for the Huggins bands from the simulated observed spectrum: note how the absorption feature associated with7 Be II still persists in the corrected spectrum, while other "fake" absorptions disappear, being originated in O 3 telluric features. To test the quality of the CUBES simulations, we have measured a pseudo equivalent width for the7 Be II feature of pEW Be,C = 1.043 ± 0.133 Å (SNR ∼ 120 for a 3s exposure) while from UVES we got pEW Be,U = 1.065 ± 0.086 Å .

  8. F. D'Antona, F. Matteucci, A&A248, 62 (1991) 9. G. Cescutti, P. Molaro, MNRAS482, 4372 (2019). DOI 10.1093/mnras/sty2967 10. D. Romano, L. Magrini, S. Randich, G. Casali, P. Bonifacio, R.D. Jeffries, F. Matteucci, E. Franciosini, L. Spina, G. Guiglion, C. Chiappini, A. Mucciarelli, P. Ventura, V. Grisoni, M. Bellazzini, T. Bensby, A. Bragaglia, P. de Laverny, A.J. Korn, S.L. Martell, G. Tautvaisiene, G. Carraro, A. Gonneau, P. Jofré, E. Pancino, R. Smiljanic, A. Vallenari, X. Fu, M.L. Gutiérrez Albarrán, F.M. Jiménez-Esteban, D. Montes, F. Damiani, M. Bergemann, C. Worley, arXiv e-prints arXiv:2106.11614 (2021) 11. F. Matteucci, A&A Rev.29(1), 5 (2021). DOI 10.1007/s00159-021-00133-8 12. K. Lodders, H. Palme, H.P. Gail, Landolt Börnstein 4B, 712 (2009). DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-88055-4 34

Acknowledgements Data presented in this work will be made available on reasonable request. LI was supported by grants from VILLUM FONDEN (project number 16599 and 25501).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.


Samara Danel

Gaël Bardon

Christophe De Franceschi

Léna Bureau

Christophe Barbraud

Karine Delord

Dora Biro

Francesco Bonadonna

Barbraud

Plant consumer innovation in skuas

Keywords: animal innovation, consumer innovation, field observation, novel food, Stercorarius

niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.



  Competing Interests: Authors declare no conflict of interest.

  to CB), and was supported by grants from the Fyssen Foundation (to SD). This 29 study was approved by the French Ethical Committee (n° 201707131540776 of 22/07/2017), after 30 favourable recommendation of the Comité d'Ethique pour L'Expérimentation Animale Languedoc-31 Roussillon (CEEA-LR), C2EA n°36, and by the Ethical Committee of the Réserve Naturelle des Terres 32 Australes et Antarctiques Françaises (decree n° 2019-130 du 28/10/2019). We declare that this work 33 complies with the current French laws.

Figure captions 98 Fig. 1

 981 Figure captions

Acknowledgments

27

This work was financed by the French Polar Institute (IPEV): projects ETHOTAAF 354 (to FB) and

2

A myriad of animal species have been reported to incorporate novel food types into their diet (Lefebvre 35 2020). This behaviour, known as consumer innovation, can be particularly useful in changing 36 environments where novel foods and foraging opportunities tend to arise [START_REF] Prasher | 88 Innovative consumers: ecological, behavioral, and physiological predictors of responses to novel 89 food[END_REF]). Field 37 notes on previously unreported consumer innovation are crucial to understand how individuals cope 38 with changes in their environment, thereby potentially influencing a species' survival and evolution 39 [START_REF] Sol | Big brains, enhanced cognition, and 94 response of birds to novel environments[END_REF]). Here, we report for the first time the consumption of an alien plant, the common

57

On 5 January 2019 (morning session, between 8 -11 a.m.), during the disassembly of the 58 experimental device (i.e., after the trial), the experimenter observed again the swallowing of a 59 dandelion's capitula by another breeding individual ('18A', an adult male). The skua, first located 60 approximately 20 cm before the apparatus, turned its back and moved away from the device. At 61 approximately 80 cm from the apparatus, the skua stopped off, cut, and swallowed directly the capitula 62 of a dandelion.

63

The third observation occurred on 8 January 2019 (afternoon session, between 1 -5 p.m.), before 64 the start of a trial, when the experimenter was unfolding the apparatus on the ground. The bird, a 65 breeding female ('21A'), was inspecting the ground approximately 2 m from the apparatus when it 66 suddenly removed the capitula of a dandelion, held it in the beak a few seconds, and ingested it.

67

Later on during the breeding season, on 16 January 2019 (morning session, between 8 -11 a.m.), in

76

In conclusion, at least some brown skuas on île Verte and île Mayès are able to integrate into their 77 diet an alien plant, in line with their opportunistic feeding habits. This short note opens new avenues 78 for assessing further (i) the prevalence of this behaviour in skua populations and (ii) if dandelion 79 consumption provides specific advantages, such as nutrition or physiological benefits. 80 81