Collaborative Research: EVOLUTION OF NORTH AMERICAN SMALL MAMMAL COMMUNITIES IN RESPONSE TO OLIGO-MIOCENE LANDSCAPE CHANGE

该项目旨在了解数百万年来植被和哺乳动物群落之间的关系。特别是小型哺乳动物比它们的大型亲戚对栖息地变化更敏感，因此研究小组将研究这种关系随时间和空间的变化，以深入了解它们如何应对不断变化的景观。这项工作对于了解过去栖息地的变化如何塑造生活在景观中的动物以及开发模型，使我们能够认识到并可能减轻当前人类驱动的栖息地改变对哺乳动物物种的影响至关重要。这项工作还将把本科生、研究生和K-12教师纳入这一过程，让他们都能看到正在进行的研究，并在工作进行时传播研究成果，以便促进公众对生态学和进化的理解。该团队将研究3000万至500万年前美国大平原和西北部的栖息地变化和生态进化模式。他们将通过在西北部的实地考察收集小型哺乳动物化石和沉积物进行植硅石提取，以记录动植物群的生态结构，并与研究充分的大平原进行比较。哺乳动物的饮食，体型和运动将估计从牙齿和骨骼代理。这些数据将被用来比较小型哺乳动物群落的结构，从植硅石组合推断当地的栖息地数据，以确定不断变化的栖息地对动物生态的影响。他们预计，随着时间的推移，栖息地开放性和异质性的变化将导致这些生态系统中小型哺乳动物的行业结构的差异。研究区域之间栖息地变化的差异提供了一个机会，以测试小型哺乳动物对栖息地变化的生态反应的程度是一致的和可预测的。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得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的支持。

This project aims to understand the relationship over millions of years between vegetation and mammalian communities. Small mammals in particular are more sensitive to habitat change than their larger relatives, so the team will examine this relationship over time and space to develop a robust understanding of how they respond to changing landscapes. This work is critical both to understanding how habitat changes in the past have shaped the animals living on the landscape and to developing models that will allow us to recognize and potentially mitigate impacts of current human-driven habitat alteration on mammalian species. The work will also integrate undergraduate and graduate students and K-12 teachers into the process, giving them all a view into ongoing research and disseminating the research results as the work is being conducted so it can advance public understanding of ecology and evolution. The team will study patterns of habitat change and ecological evolution in the U.S. Great Plains and Northwest from 30 to 5 million years ago. They will collect fossil small mammals and sediment for phytolith extraction through fieldwork in the Northwest to build a record of the ecological structure of faunas and floras to compare with the well-studied Great Plains. Mammal diet, body size, and locomotion will be estimated from dental and skeletal proxies. These data will be used to compare the structure of small mammal communities to local habitat data inferred from phytolith assemblages, to determine the influence of changing habitats on faunal ecology. They expect that changes through time in habitat openness and heterogeneity will lead to differences in the guild structure of small mammals in those ecosystems. Differences in habitat changes between the study regions offer an opportunity to test the degree to which ecological responses of small mammals to habitat change are consistent and predictable.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.