Impact of climatic and environmental variability on faunal composition and distribution of molluscan and mammalian faunas in Eastern Africa

气候和动物群变化之间的因果联系已被假定为不同生态系统的动物群(Bromage和Schrenk，1999年)。该项目的目的是通过在时间和地理背景下对东非陆地和湖泊群落结构的详细分析来检验这些假设。对陆生动物的解释主要来自对哺乳动物群落的生态变量的分析，如摄食习性、体型和运动偏好。利用分子方法和系统地理分析，为湖相软体动物提供了一个追踪环境变化的框架。通过将这两项战略结合起来，我们期望能够建立一个在时间和地理上精细的东非生境和动物群变化的区域模式，该模式可以与非洲中更新世-更新世的气候变化模式相联系，并深入了解湖泊和陆地演化过程之间的相互依存关系以及与气候变化的关系。

The causal link between climatic and faunal change has been hypothezised for faunal groups of different ecosystems (Bromage and Schrenk 1999). The aim of this project is to test these hypotheses by detailed analyses of Eastern African terrestrial and lacustrine community structures in a temporal and geographical context. For the terrestrial fauna interpretations are derived mainly from the analysis of ecovariables of mammalian communities, such as feeding habit, body size and locomotion preferences. For the lacustrine molluscan fauna a framework to trace environmental change is available with the utilization of molecular methods and phylogeographic analysis. By combining both strategies we expect to be able to develop a temporally and geographically fine scaled regional East African model of habitat and faunal change which can be linked to models of climate change in the African Mio-Plio-Pleistocene and provide insight into interdependencies of lacustrine and terrestrial evolutionary processes in relation to each other and to climatic change.