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

新墨西哥州大学的乔纳森·多姆布罗斯基和艾米丽·莉娜·琼斯博士将研究环境变化对人类饮食中新食物的影响。该项目有助于开发考古学上可见的指标，以确定何时以相对较低的丰度恢复的食物类型可能与人类营养需求有关。在美国西南部，人们一直认为鱼在祖先普韦布洛群体的饮食中并不重要。然而，在新墨西哥州的前西班牙时期晚期考古遗址中，一直有少量的鱼类遗骸被发现，而且在早期时期，这些鱼类遗骸是罕见的。干旱状况的结束可能影响了人们对食物的不同决定。此外，考古学家和生态学家都对沙漠生态系统中的西班牙前捕鱼感兴趣。了解更多关于前西班牙鱼类群落的生态学将提供一个新的来源，在该地区的鱼类遗骸被认为是微不足道的古环境信息。考虑到现代人类活动的影响和目前的干旱预测，沙漠溪流是至关重要的保护问题。该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中动植物管理的机构的兴趣。这项研究还将支持一位获得博士学位的年轻学者的工作，并将为一位本科生研究助理提供实践培训和资金。Dombrosky在Jones博士的监督下，将使用植根于行为生态学的理论来理解捕鱼如何可能成为祖先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）鱼骨的放射性碳年代测定，以确定捕鱼的时间和克里思; 2）考古遗址中鱼类的体型估计，以评估它们是否异常大;以及3）分析从这些地点回收的鱼骨的稳定同位素组成，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响进行评估来支持审查标准。

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.