Species-specific responses of Late Quaternary megafauna to climate and humans

Abstract

Despite decades of research, the roles of climate and humans in driving the dramatic extinctions of large-bodied mammals during the Late Quaternary remain contentious. We use ancient DNA, species distribution models and the human fossil record to elucidate how climate and humans shaped the demographic history of woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, bison and musk ox. We show that climate has been a major driver of population change over the past 50,000 years. However, each species responds differently to the effects of climatic shifts, habitat redistribution and human encroachment. Although climate change alone can explain the extinction of some species, such as Eurasian musk ox and woolly rhinoceros, a combination of climatic and anthropogenic effects appears to be responsible for the extinction of others, including Eurasian steppe bison and wild horse. We find no genetic signature or any distinctive range dynamics distinguishing extinct from surviving species, underscoring the challenges associated with predicting future responses of extant mammals to climate and human-mediated habitat change.

The impact of climate change on the structure of Pleistocene food webs across the mammoth steppe

“…Changes in prey abundance undoubtedly affected predator species differently. The observed increase in dietary specialization at the guild level indicates a general trend towards increasing resource specialization among predators, coincident with a general decline and range contraction of many Eurasian herbivores [55]. In Beringia, this trend appears to be largely influenced by the increased contribution of Rangifer to the diets of predators, whereas European predators rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org Proc R Soc B 280: 20130239…”

“…Rangifer became an important component of felid diets in the post-glacial, coinciding with an observed increase in Rangifer abundance, particularly in North America ca 20 kyr BP [55], although we cannot rule out that this dietary switch was a consequence of behavioural changes independent of prey population dynamics. The strongest dietary estimates, corresponding to the peak densities of prey-contribution distributions, for Canis and Ursus show different patterns than those of felids; however, the increase in Rangifer abundance may have impacted these predators as well.…”

“…Although it has been noted that Mammuthus was underused in Beringia in all time periods [12], our results show a similarly low reliance on Bison and Equus. The low contribution of Bison may be the consequence of a sharp decline in Bison abundance beginning ca 35 kyr BP, and accelerating after 16 kyr BP [63,55]. A shift to a reliance on Rangifer by the entire predator guild mirrors the dietary switch observed for felids.…”

The Neotoma Paleoecology Database, a multiproxy, international, community-curated data resource

“…Networks of paleoecological records, therefore, provide fundamental scientific infrastructure for understanding the responses of species to large and abrupt environmental changes, the mechanisms that promote resilience, and the interplay between climatic and biotic interactions (Dawson et al, 2011;Blois et al, 2013;Moritz and Agudo, 2013;Jackson and Blois, 2015). Examples include the processes controlling contemporary and past patterns of community, species, and genetic diversity (Fritz et al, 2013;Blarquez et al, 2014;De La Torre et al, 2014;Gutiérrez-García et al, 2014;Sandom et al, 2014;Cinget et al, 2015;Jezkova et al, 2015); identification of species refugia (Bennett and Provan, 2008;Gavin et al, 2014;Vickers and Buckland, 2015); rates of species expansion (Ordonez and Williams, 2013;Giesecke et al, 2017); the reshuffling of species into no-analog communities during climate change (Graham et al, 1996;Radeloff et al, 2015;Finsinger et al, 2017); the timing and patterns of abrupt ecological and climate change (Shuman et al, 2009;Seddon et al, 2015); quantification of the time lags between abrupt climate change and local ecological response (Ammann et al, 2013;Birks, 2015); and the timing, causes, and consequences of late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions (Lorenzen et al, 2011;Doughty et al, 2013;Emery-Wetherell et al, 2017).…”

Integration of Heterogeneous Computing Infrastructures for Genome Sequencing Data Analysis

“…Возможность использования ДНК из археологического и палеонтологического материала позволяет решать многочисленные задачи, связанные с эволюцией экосистем в различных климатических условиях, с происхождением и эволюцией многих патогенных микроорганизмов, например чумной палочки, возбудителей туберкулеза или бруцеллеза [12]. В данной работе использовались геномные чтения шерстистого мамонта (Mammuthus primigenius), опубликованные ранее [13].…”