Temporal Change in Functional Richness and Evenness in the Eastern African Plio-Pleistocene Carnivoran Guild
نویسندگان
چکیده
We analyze functional richness and functional evenness of the carnivoran guild in eastern Africa from 3.5 Ma to 1.5 Ma, and compare them to the present day. The data consist of characters of the craniodental apparatus of 76 species of fossil and extant carnivorans, divided into four 0.5 Ma time slices from 3.5 to 1.5 Ma, together with the modern fauna. Focus is on large (>21.5 kg) carnivores. Results show that the large carnivore guild has lost nearly 99% of its functional richness since 3.5 Ma, in a process starting prior to 2 Ma. Measurement of functional evenness shows the modern large carnivore guild to be unique in being randomly distributed in morphospace while in all past time slices there is significant clustering of species. The results are analyzed in the light of known changes to climate and environment in eastern Africa. We conclude that climate change is unlikely to explain all of the changes found and suggest that the evolution of early hominins into carnivore niche space, especially the evolution of derived dietary strategies after 2 Ma, played a significant part in the reduction of carnivore functional richness.
منابع مشابه
Carnivoran paleoguilds of Africa: implications for hominid food procurement strategies.
Tool-using hominids, as carnivorous animals, would have been part of the various carnivore guilds present in Plio-Pleistocene Africa. Hominid dietary strategies must be understood within the larger context of carnivore behavior and ecology, as carnivorans could have affected the abilities of hominids to procure meat and/or marrow. The functional anatomy of extant and fossil carnivorans was exam...
متن کاملClimatic change as an engine for speciation in flightless Orthoptera species inhabiting African mountains.
Many East African mountains are characterized by an exceptionally high biodiversity. Here we assess the hypothesis that climatic fluctuations during the Plio-Pleistocene led to ecological fragmentation with subsequent genetic isolation and speciation in forest habitats in East Africa. Hypotheses on speciation in savannah lineages are also investigated. To do this, mitochondrial DNA sequences fr...
متن کاملSpecies Richness, Evenness and Plant Community Stability 22 Years after Ploughing a Semiarid Rangeland
Rangeland ploughing and cultivation using dry land farming crops may be amajor reason for the destruction of natural resources in the semiarid and sub-humid regionswhich may significantly change the composition and reduce the stability of the affectedcommunities. In present research, an abandoned ploughed site was compared with a nearbyreference site in the semiarid rangelands of Baharkish, Quc...
متن کاملMacroinvertebrate diversity indices: A quantitative bioassessment of ecological health status of an oxbow lake in Eastern India
Aquatic macroinvertebrates, which play a significant role in the food chain of an ecosystem, are used in fresh water quality assessment to identify the environmental stress resulting from a variety of anthropogenic disturbances. Seasonal surveys of macroinvertebrate communities were conducted from April 2013 to March 2014 in Chhariganga oxbow lake of Nadia District of West Bengal, an eastern st...
متن کاملHominid–Carnivore Coevolution and Invasion of the Predatory Guild
Coevolution is defined as reciprocal selective pressures that operate to make the evolution of one taxon partially dependent on the evolution another. This process often involves multiple species exploiting shared limiting resources. In classic coevolutionary models, populations of sympatric species are seen to diverge in one or more morphological, ecological, or behavioral traits to effect mor...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره 8 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2013