Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Effects of Environmental Change on Fish Ecology

新墨西哥大学的乔纳森·东布罗斯基和艾米丽·莉娜·琼斯博士将研究环境变化对将新食物纳入人类饮食的影响。该项目有助于开发考古上可见的指标，以确定何时恢复的相对较低丰度的食物类型可能与人类的营养需求有关。在美国西南部，长期以来，人们一直认为鱼类在普韦布洛祖先的饮食中并不重要。然而，在新墨西哥州的晚期领悟考古遗址中，一直发现少量的鱼类遗骸，在早期时期，它们是罕见的。干旱状况的结束可能影响了人们对所吃食物做出不同决定的方式。此外，考古学家和生态学家都对沙漠生态系统中的领悟渔业感兴趣。在一个鱼类遗骸被认为微不足道的地区，更多地了解理解鱼类群落的生态学将提供一个新的古环境信息来源。考虑到现代人类活动的影响和当前的干旱预报，沙漠溪流是至关重要的保护问题。这个项目的结果不仅会引起学者的兴趣，而且会引起负责沙漠生态系统动植物管理的机构的兴趣。这项研究还将支持一名获得博士学位的年轻学者的工作，并将为一名本科生研究助理提供实践培训和资金。在琼斯博士的监督下，东布罗斯基将使用植根于行为生态学的理论来了解捕鱼可能如何成为祖传普韦布洛农民的最佳食物获取策略。三条证据将检验这个问题：1)鱼骨的放射性碳测年，以确定捕鱼的时间和节奏；2)从考古遗址估计鱼类的身体大小，以评估它们是否异常大；以及3)分析从这些遗址发现的鱼骨的稳定同位素组成，以确定鱼类在领悟后期是否有更多不同的饮食。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Jonathan Dombrosky and Dr. Emily Lena Jones of the University of New Mexico, will research the impact of a changing environment on the incorporation of new foods into human diets. This project helps develop archaeologically visible indicators of when a food type recovered in relatively low abundance might relate to human nutritional demands. In the American Southwest, it has long been assumed that fish were unimportant in the diet of Ancestral Pueblo groups. Yet, small numbers of fish remains are consistently recovered from late prehispanic archaeological sites in New Mexico, and they are rare during earlier time periods. The end of drought conditions may have impacted how people made different decisions about the foods they ate. In addition, prehispanic fishing in desert ecosystems is of interest to both archaeologists and ecologists. Understanding more about the ecology of prehispanic fish communities will provide a new source of paleoenvironmental information in a region where fish remains are thought to be insignificant. Desert streams are of critical conservation concern given modern anthropogenic impacts and current drought forecasts. The results of this project will be of interest not only to scholars, but to agencies charged with the management of plants and animals in desert ecosystems. This research will also support the work of a young scholar earning his PhD and will provide hands-on training and funding for one undergraduate research assistant.Dombrosky, under the supervision of Dr. Jones, will use theory rooted in behavioral ecology to understand how fishing might have become an optimal food-getting strategy for Ancestral Pueblo farmers. Three lines of evidence will test this question: 1) radiocarbon dates of fish bones, to establish the timing and tempo of fishing; 2) body size estimations of fishes from archaeological sites, to assess whether they were unusually large; and 3) analysis of the stable isotopic composition of fish bones recovered from these sites, to determine if fishes had more variable diets during the late prehispanic period.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.