Turning cycle restrictions into mesh patterns via Foata's fundamental transformation

Abstract: An adjacent $q$-cycle is a natural generalization of an adjacent transposition. We show that the number of adjacent $q$-cycles in a permutation maps to the sum of occurrences of two mesh patterns under Foata's fundamental transformation. As a corollary we resolve Conjecture 3.14 in the paper "From Hertzprung's problem to pattern-rewriting systems" by the first author.