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Miller JH, Wald EJ, Druckenmiller P. Shed female caribou antlers extend records of calving activity on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by millennia. Front Ecol Evol 2023. [DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2022.1059456] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/10/2023] Open
Abstract
Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) have among the longest annual migrations of any terrestrial mammal as they move from winter ranges to spring calving grounds. Biomonitoring records indicate broad consistencies in calving geography across the last several decades, but how long have herds used particular calving grounds? Furthermore, how representative are modern patterns of calving geography to periods that pre-date recent climatic perturbations and increased anthropogenic stresses? While modern ecological datasets are not long enough to address these questions, bones from past generations of caribou lying on the tundra provide unique opportunities to study historical calving geography. This is possible because female caribou shed their antlers within days of giving birth, releasing a skeletal indicator of calving. Today, the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Alaska) is a key calving ground for the Porcupine Caribou Herd (PCH). To test the duration across which caribou have used this area as a calving ground, we radiocarbon dated three highly weathered female antlers collected from tundra surfaces on the Coastal Plain. Calibrated radiocarbon dates indicate that these antlers were shed between ~1,600 and more than 3,000 calendar years ago. The antiquity of these shed antlers provides the first physical evidence of calving activity on the PCH calving grounds from previous millennia, substantiating the long ecological legacy of the Coastal Plain as a caribou calving ground. Comparisons to published lake core records also reveal that dates of two of the antlers correspond to periods with average summer temperatures that were warmer than has been typical during the last several decades of biomonitoring. This finding expands the range of climatic settings in which caribou are known to use the current PCH calving grounds and suggests that the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge may remain an important caribou calving ground during at least portions of predicted future warming. Discarded skeletal materials provide opportunities to assess the historical states of living populations, including aspects of reproductive biology and migration. Particularly in high-latitude settings, these insights can extend across millennia and offer rare glimpses into the past that can inform current and future management policies.
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Britton K, Crowley BE, Bataille CP, Miller JH, Wooller MJ. Editorial: A Golden Age for Strontium Isotope Research? Current Advances in Paleoecological and Archaeological Research. Front Ecol Evol 2022. [DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2021.820295] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
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Miller JH, Crowley BE, Bataille CP, Wald EJ, Kelly A, Gaetano M, Bahn V, Druckenmiller P. Historical Landscape Use of Migratory Caribou: New Insights From Old Antlers. Front Ecol Evol 2021. [DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2020.590837] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Accumulations of shed caribou antlers (Rangifer tarandus) are valuable resources for expanding the temporal scope with which we evaluate seasonal landscape use of herds. Female caribou shed their antlers within days of giving birth, thus marking calving ground locations. Antler geochemistry (87Sr/86Sr) reflects the isotopic signature of regions used during antler growth, thereby providing data on a second component of seasonal landscape use. Here, we evaluate shed caribou antlers from the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska. The Central and Eastern regions of the Coastal Plain are calving grounds for the Porcupine Caribou Herd, while the Western Coastal Plain supports calving by the Central Arctic Herd. We found that antler 87Sr/86Sr from the Central and Eastern Coastal Plain were isotopically indistinguishable, while antler 87Sr/86Sr from the Western Coastal Plain was significantly smaller. For each region, we compared isotopic data for “recent” antlers, which overlap the bulk of standardized state and federal caribou monitoring (early 1980s and younger), with “historical” antlers shed in years predating these records (from the 1300s to the 1970s). For Porcupine Herd females calving in the Arctic Refuge, comparisons of antler 87Sr/86Sr through time indicate that summer ranges have been consistent since at least the 1960s. However, changes between historical and recent antler 87Sr/86Sr for the Central Arctic Herd indicate a shift in summer landscape use after the late 1970s. The timing of this shift is coincident with multiple factors including increased infrastructural development in their range related to hydrocarbon extraction. Accumulations of shed caribou antlers and their isotope geochemistry extend modern datasets by decades to centuries and provide valuable baseline data for evaluating potential anthropogenic and other influences on caribou migration and landscape use.
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Domingo MS, Martín-Perea DM, Badgley C, Cantero E, López-Guerrero P, Oliver A, Negro JJ. Taphonomic information from the modern vertebrate death assemblage of Doñana National Park, Spain. PLoS One 2020; 15:e0242082. [PMID: 33206694 PMCID: PMC7673518 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242082] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/28/2020] [Accepted: 10/27/2020] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Modern death assemblages provide insights about the early stages of fossilization and useful ecological information about the species inhabiting the ecosystem. We present the results of taphonomic monitoring of modern vertebrate carcasses and bones from Doñana National Park, a Mediterranean coastal ecosystem in Andalusia, Spain. Ten different habitats were surveyed. Half of them occur in active depositional environments (marshland, lake margin, river margin, beach and dunes). Most of the skeletal remains belong to land mammals larger than 5 kg in body weight (mainly wild and feral ungulates). Overall, the Doñana bone assemblage shows good preservation with little damage to the bones, partly as a consequence of the low predator pressure on large vertebrates. Assemblages from active depositional habitats differ significantly from other habitats in terms of the higher incidence of breakage and chewing marks on bones in the latter, which result from scavenging, mainly by wild boar and red fox. The lake-margin and river-margin death assemblages have high concentrations of well preserved bones that are undergoing burial and offer the greatest potential to produce fossil assemblages. The spatial distribution of species in the Doñana death assemblage generally reflects the preferred habitats of the species in life. Meadows seem to be a preferred winter habitat for male deer, given the high number of shed antlers recorded there. This study is further proof that taphonomy can provide powerful insights to better understand the ecology of modern species and to infer past and future scenarios for the fossil record.
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Affiliation(s)
- M. Soledad Domingo
- Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Estación Biológica de Doñana-CSIC, Seville, Spain
| | - David M. Martín-Perea
- Departamento de Paleobiología, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
- Departamento de Geodinámica, Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencias Geológicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Institute of Human Evolution in Africa – IDEA, Madrid, Spain
| | - Catherine Badgley
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America
| | - Enrique Cantero
- Departamento de Paleobiología, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales-CSIC, Madrid, Spain
| | - Paloma López-Guerrero
- Departamento de Geodinámica, Estratigrafía y Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencias Geológicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Adriana Oliver
- Asociación Mujeres con los Pies en la Tierra, Madrid, Spain
| | - Juan José Negro
- Departamento de Ecología Evolutiva, Estación Biológica de Doñana-CSIC, Seville, Spain
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Barton PS, Evans MJ, Foster CN, Pechal JL, Bump JK, Quaggiotto MM, Benbow ME. Towards Quantifying Carrion Biomass in Ecosystems. Trends Ecol Evol 2019; 34:950-961. [PMID: 31256926 DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2019.06.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 39] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/25/2019] [Revised: 05/13/2019] [Accepted: 06/04/2019] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
The decomposition of animal biomass (carrion) contributes to the recycling of energy and nutrients through ecosystems. Whereas the role of plant decomposition in ecosystems is broadly recognised, the significance of carrion to ecosystem functioning remains poorly understood. Quantitative data on carrion biomass are lacking and there is no clear pathway towards improved knowledge in this area. Here, we present a framework to show how quantities derived from individual carcasses can be scaled up using population metrics, allowing for comparisons among ecosystems and other forms of biomass. Our framework facilitates the generation of new data that is critical to building a quantitative understanding of the contribution of carrion to trophic processes and ecosystem stocks and flows.
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Affiliation(s)
- Philip S Barton
- Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia.
| | - Maldwyn J Evans
- Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia
| | - Claire N Foster
- Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia
| | - Jennifer L Pechal
- Department of Entomology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
| | - Joseph K Bump
- Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN 55108, USA
| | - M-Martina Quaggiotto
- Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, University of Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK
| | - M Eric Benbow
- Department of Entomology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA; Department of Osteopathic Medical Specialties, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
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Lavretsky P, Miller JH, Bahn V, Peters JL. Exploring fall migratory patterns of American black ducks using eight decades of band-recovery data. J Wildl Manage 2014. [DOI: 10.1002/jwmg.752] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/11/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Philip Lavretsky
- Wright State University; 3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy Dayton OH 45435 USA
| | - Joshua H. Miller
- Department of Geology; University of Cincinnati; 500 Geology/Physics Building Cincinnati OH 45221 USA
- Wright State University; 3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy Dayton OH 45435 USA
- Florida Museum of Natural History; Dickinson Hall Gainesville FL 32611 USA
- University of Alaska Museum; 907 Yukon Dr. Fairbanks AK 99775 USA
| | - Volker Bahn
- Wright State University; 3640 Colonel Glenn Hwy Dayton OH 45435 USA
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Kidwell SM, Tomasovych A. Implications of Time-Averaged Death Assemblages for Ecology and Conservation Biology. ANNUAL REVIEW OF ECOLOGY EVOLUTION AND SYSTEMATICS 2013. [DOI: 10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110512-135838] [Citation(s) in RCA: 100] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
Biologists increasingly appreciate the importance of community-level attributes in the functioning and temporal turnover of ecosystems, but data other than species richness are difficult to acquire over the habitat-to-regional and decadal-to-millennial scales needed to recognize biodiversity change, discriminate between natural and anthropogenic drivers, and inform theoretical and applied ecology. Death assemblages (DAs)—the actively accumulating organic remains encountered in present-day seabeds and landscapes, as distinct from permanently buried fossil assemblages—are an underexploited source of historical information at precisely these scales. Meta-analyses, dynamic modeling, and individual case studies, particularly of mollusks and mammals, reveal that DAs differ from censused living assemblages (LAs) primarily because they are temporally coarse, time-averaged samples, contrary to concerns that postmortem bias dominates. Temporal pooling predictably damps the ability of DAs to detect small-scale variation, but promotes their ability to inventory rare species; estimate the abundance structure of the metacommunity; document range changes; evaluate historic habitat use; and identify now-absent species, community states, and anthropogenically shifted baselines.
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Affiliation(s)
- Susan M. Kidwell
- Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637
| | - Adam Tomasovych
- Geological Institute, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava 84005, Slovakia
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Miller JH, Druckenmiller P, Bahn V. Antlers on the Arctic Refuge: capturing multi-generational patterns of calving ground use from bones on the landscape. Proc Biol Sci 2013; 280:20130275. [PMID: 23536601 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2013.0275] [Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Bone accumulations faithfully record historical ecological data on animal communities, and owing to millennial-scale bone survival on high-latitude landscapes, have exceptional potential for extending records on arctic ecosystems. For the Porcupine Caribou Herd, maintaining access to calving grounds on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR, Alaska) is a central management concern. However, variability in calving ground geography over the 30+ years of monitoring suggests establishing the impacts of climate change and potential petroleum development on future calving success could benefit from extended temporal perspectives. Using accumulations of female antlers (shed within days of calving) and neonatal skeletons, we test if caribou calving grounds develop measureable and characteristic bone accumulations and if skeletal data may be helpful in establishing a fuller, historically integrated understanding of landscape and habitat needs. Bone surveys of an important ANWR calving area reveal abundant shed antlers (reaching 10(3) km(-2)) and high proportional abundance of newborn skeletal individuals (up to 60% neonate). Openly vegetated riparian terraces, which compose less than 10 per cent of ANWR calving grounds, yield significantly higher antler concentrations than more abundant habitats traditionally viewed as primary calving terrain. Differences between habitats appear robust to potential differences in bone visibility. The distribution of antler weathering stages mirrors known multi-decadal calving histories and highlights portions of the antler accumulation that probably significantly extends records of calving activity. Death assemblages offer historically integrated ecological data valuable for the management and conservation of faunas across polar latitudes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joshua H Miller
- Department of Geology, University of Cincinnati, 500 Geology/Physics Building, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA.
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