Did climatic seasonality control late Quaternary artiodactyl densities in western North America?

Broughton, Jack M.; Byers, David; Bryson, Reid A.; Eckerle, William; Madsen, David B.

doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2008.07.005

Cited by 83 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 127 publications

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“…Temperature seasonality near Homestead Cave has been inferred to be highest at the terminal Pleistocene, declining monotonically thereafter throughout the Holocene (26). The dramatic changes in small mammal energy flow ca.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy flow and functional compensation in Great Basin small mammals under natural and anthropogenic environmental change

Terry

Rowe

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Research on the ecological impacts of environmental change has primarily focused at the species level, leaving the responses of ecosystem-level properties like energy flow poorly understood. This is especially so over millennial timescales inaccessible to direct observation. Here we examine how energy flow within a Great Basin small mammal community responded to climate-driven environmental change during the past 12,800 y, and use this baseline to evaluate responses observed during the past century. Our analyses reveal marked stability in energy flow during rapid climatic warming at the terminal Pleistocene despite dramatic turnover in the distribution of mammalian body sizes and habitat-associated functional groups. Functional group turnover was strongly correlated with climatedriven changes in regional vegetation, with climate and vegetation change preceding energetic shifts in the small mammal community. In contrast, the past century has witnessed a substantial reduction in energy flow caused by an increase in energetic dominance of smallbodied species with an affinity for closed grass habitats. This suggests that modern changes in land cover caused by anthropogenic activities-particularly the spread of nonnative annual grasslandshas led to a breakdown in the compensatory dynamics of energy flow. Human activities are thus modifying the small mammal community in ways that differ from climate-driven expectations, resulting in an energetically novel ecosystem. Our study illustrates the need to integrate across ecological and temporal scales to provide robust insights for long-term conservation and management.paleoecology | Quaternary | desert rodents | body size | invasive grass T he chronic and cumulative anthropogenic impacts of the past century have spurred considerable shifts in climates and habitats over local to global scales. Efforts to understand ecological responses to these changes have largely been focused at the species level (e.g., range shifts) over annual to decadal timescales. However, climate and habitat change impact biotas across all levels of ecological organization, from individuals to entire ecosystems. Furthermore, many ecological processes unfold over timescales inaccessible to direct observation or experimentation (1). Evaluating the response of higher-level aggregate properties (e.g., energy flow) to environmental change across centennial to millennial timescales can thus provide the temporal context needed to assess whether modern systems now fall within or outside their natural range of variability.Emphasis on species-level responses to environmental change is rooted in the paradigm that populations are highly dynamic while the aggregate properties of a community remain relatively stable and are thus more robust to perturbation. Aggregate properties have been shown to reflect resource availability (2, 3), and their stability has often been attributed to compensatory dynamics among individual species or functional groups (4). However, recent work has shown that marked change in aggrega...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy flow and functional compensation in Great Basin small mammals under natural and anthropogenic environmental change

Terry

Rowe

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…to identify, among other things, instances of prehistoric sustainability (e.g., Campbell and Butler 2010b), cases of environmental rebound (e.g., Jones 2016b), climate-driven changes in resource acquisition (e.g., Broughton et al 2008), and gendered foraging (e.g., Zeanah 2004). On the other hand, in at least some cases archaeobotanical data have been used to support studies of resource depression (e.g., Simms 1984).…”

Section: Research Communicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Depression? A Review of the Optimal Foraging Theory Literature in Zooarchaeology and Archaeobotany

Jones

Hurley

2017

EBL

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The use of optimal foraging theory in archaeology has been criticized for focusing heavily on “negative” human-environmental interactions, particularly anthropogenic resource depression, in which prey populations are reduced by foragers’ own foraging activities. In addition, some researchers have suggested the focus on resource depression is more common in the zooarchaeological literature than in the archaeobotanical literature, indicating fundamental differences in the ways zooarchaeologists and archaeobotanists approach the archaeological record. In this paper, we assess these critiques through a review of the literature between 1997 and 2017. We find that studies identifying resource depression occur at similar rates in the archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological literature. In addition, while earlier archaeological applications of optimal foraging theory did focus heavily on the identification of resource depression, the literature published between 2013 and 2017 shows a wider variety of approaches.

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“…Furthermore, earlier in the Holocene, Bison were less abundant in the Great Plains and were intermittently present in the Southwest (Broughton et al, 2008). There are potentially multiple factors contributing to the seemingly poor fossil record of Bison during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene on the CP.…”

Section: Resumen-los Fósiles Dementioning

confidence: 99%

Late Pleistocene and HoloceneBisonof the Colorado Plateau

Martin

Mead

2017

The Southwestern Naturalist

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Did climatic seasonality control late Quaternary artiodactyl densities in western North America?

Cited by 83 publications

References 127 publications

Energy flow and functional compensation in Great Basin small mammals under natural and anthropogenic environmental change

Energy flow and functional compensation in Great Basin small mammals under natural and anthropogenic environmental change

Beyond Depression? A Review of the Optimal Foraging Theory Literature in Zooarchaeology and Archaeobotany

Late Pleistocene and HoloceneBisonof the Colorado Plateau

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