The dead do not lie: using skeletal remains for rapid assessment of historical small-mammal community baselines
The dead do not lie: using skeletal remains for rapid assessment of historical small-mammal community baselines
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死者不会说谎：利用骨骼遗骸快速评估历史小型哺乳动物群落基线
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发表时间：
2010
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
R. Terry
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
R. Terry
保护和恢复工作往往因缺乏强烈的人为环境变化之前的历史基线而受到阻碍。在本文中，我的文件，自然积累的骨骼仍然是一个潜在的来源，高质量的数据的历史组成和结构的小型哺乳动物群落。我这样做是通过评估现代，十年和百年尺度的时间平均样本的骨骼遗骸（集中猛禽捕食）的生活小型哺乳动物社区，他们来自的保真度。为了测试骨骼遗骸揭示基线变化的能力，我采用了一个自然实验的设计，比较了两个埋藏学相似的大盆地洞穴地点，在过去的世纪里，人类的土地利用方式已经发生了分歧。我发现在未受干扰的网站相对停滞，但文件的小型哺乳动物群落在网站上受到最近的干扰迅速重组。我独立地验证了这一结果，使用历史捕获记录，以表明死亡仍然准确地捕捉到这一基线偏移的幅度和方向。因此，骨骼遗骸的调查提供了一个简单，强大和快速的替代方法，以了解现代小型哺乳动物群落的历史结构和动态。
Conservation and restoration efforts are often hindered by a lack of historical baselines that pre-date intense anthropogenic environmental change. In this paper I document that natural accumulations of skeletal remains represent a potential source of high-quality data on the historical composition and structure of small-mammal communities. I do so by assessing the fidelity of modern, decadal and centennial-scale time-averaged samples of skeletal remains (concentrated by raptor predation) to the living small-mammal communities from which they are derived. To test the power of skeletal remains to reveal baseline shifts, I employ the design of a natural experiment, comparing two taphonomically similar Great Basin cave localities in areas where anthropogenic land-use practices have diverged within the last century. I find relative stasis at the undisturbed site, but document rapid restructuring of the small-mammal community at the site subjected to recent disturbance. I independently validate this result using historical trapping records to show that dead remains accurately capture both the magnitude and direction of this baseline shift. Surveys of skeletal remains therefore provide a simple, powerful and rapid alternative approach for gaining insight into the historical structure and dynamics of modern small-mammal communities.