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新食物融入人类饮食的影响。该项目有助于开发考古学上可见的指标，以确定某种丰度相对较低的食物类型何时可能与人类的营养需求有关。在美国西南部，人们一直认为鱼在祖先普韦布洛人的饮食中不重要。然而，在新墨西哥州的前西班牙晚期考古遗址中，不断发现少量的鱼类遗骸，而且在更早的时期，它们是罕见的。干旱条件的结束可能影响了人们对食物的不同选择。此外，前西班牙人在沙漠生态系统中的捕鱼也引起了考古学家和生态学家的兴趣。更多地了解前西班牙鱼类群落的生态学，将为鱼类遗骸被认为微不足道的地区提供古环境信息的新来源。考虑到现代人为影响和当前的干旱预报，沙漠河流具有重要的保护意义。这个项目的结果不仅会引起学者的兴趣，而且会引起负责管理沙漠生态系统中动植物的机构的兴趣。这项研究还将支持一名年轻学者攻读博士学位，并将为一名本科生研究助理提供实践培训和资助。在琼斯博士的指导下，东布罗斯基将运用植根于行为生态学的理论来理解捕鱼是如何成为普韦布洛祖先农民获取食物的最佳策略的。有三种证据可以检验这个问题：1)用放射性碳测定鱼骨的年代，以确定捕鱼的时间和节奏；2)对考古遗址中鱼类的体型进行估算，以评估它们是否异常大；3)分析从这些地点回收的鱼骨的稳定同位素组成，以确定鱼类在前西班牙晚期是否有更多的可变饮食。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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.