P3LIG

"People, prey and predators: Community dynamics in the Last Interglacial"

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Human societies have a large impact on mammal faunas. Conversely, over the course of history, human culture has been shaped by interactions with mammal communities. The proposed research will tease out how the interplay between climatic factors and community dynamics affected the composition of large mammal faunas and the distribution and behaviour of human groups in northwest Europe, focusing on the warm period known as the Last Interglacial (around 120,000 years ago). During this period, important differences occurred between large mammal communities of the British Isles and the continent. In particular, humans, horses and forest rhinos (the latter two were prime prey species for human groups during the cold period before the Last Interglacial) are missing from the British faunas. A comparison between continental Europe and the British Isles provides a unique opportunity to study the interactions between humans, their competitors (large carnivores) and their prey species. An innovative combination of palaeoecological and morphometric approaches, including palaeoenvironmental modelling, statistical analysis, food web topology, geometric morphometrics, and microwear and mesowear analysis, will be applied to fossil assemblages to address these questions. The integration of different levels of analysis (populations, species, communities) will greatly increase our insight into the dynamics of mammal communities in rapidly changing environments. The research will form part of a postdoctoral fellowship, enabling the applicant to move to an institute which has the appropriate knowledge and resources to facilitate the acquisition of new skills and the application of new research methods by the applicant. The proposed research will strengthen the applicant’s position as an academic researcher after a trans-national mobility period for carrying out PhD research and expand on previously established contacts with researchers and institutes across northern Europe and Russia.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

An EU-funded project studied various elements of large mammal populations from the Last Interglacial. The initiative sought to determine if the internal dynamics of animal communities are as influential as climatic processes in shaping large mammal faunas.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Armed with this hypothesis, the 'People, prey and predators: Community dynamics in the Last Interglacial' (P3LIG) project collected and created a database of faunal lists and environmental information. The data cover 81 Last Interglacial sites that have been securely dated.

Studies revealed that the varied number of herbivores and their species composition across Europe impacted on the structure of the food web. However, limitations in assessing past animal abundances from fossil remains hampered the reconstruction of past food webs.

An analysis was carried out of the geographic distribution for each species, and faunal variation was assessed together with site type. Results showed that faunas from different site types did not differ significantly in species richness.

Each mammal species was classified and categorised according to certain variables to examine community structure. This offered insights into habitat requirements and niches filled by the mammalian community. Community structure was found to be stable, corroborating other evidence for the climatic homogeneity of Europe during the period in question.

Rhinoceroses were chosen for the two objectives of studying dietary variation within herbivore and carnivore guilds, and habitat preferences. These areas of study involved collecting comparative data for the five extant rhinoceros species in three museums in Belgium, Germany and France. Various findings offer new knowledge on particular rhinoceros species, such as differences related primarily to body size. A combination of external climatic processes and internal dynamics of the animal communities helped shape the European Last Interglacial faunas.

P3LIG contributed to the body of knowledge regarding the influence of external climatic processes as well as animal communities' in shaping mammalian faunas. The project was able to underline the value of applying ecological concepts and methods to enhance our understanding of patterns and processes in European fossil faunas.