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

这个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对栖息地的变化比它们的大型亲戚更敏感，所以研究小组将随着时间和空间的推移研究这种关系，以对它们如何应对不断变化的景观有一个强有力的了解。这项工作对于理解过去栖息地的变化是如何塑造生活在这片土地上的动物的，以及开发模型，使我们能够认识到并潜在地减轻当前人类驱动的栖息地改变对哺乳动物物种的影响，都是至关重要的。这项工作还将把本科生、研究生和K-12教师纳入到这一过程中，让他们都能了解正在进行的研究，并在工作进行时传播研究结果，从而促进公众对生态学和进化的理解。该小组将研究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。他们将在西北地区进行实地考察，收集小型哺乳动物化石和沉积物，提取植物岩，以建立动植物生态结构的记录，与研究充分的大平原进行比较。哺乳动物的饮食、体型和运动将通过牙齿和骨骼来估计。这些数据将用于比较小型哺乳动物群落的结构与从植物岩组合推断的当地生境数据，以确定生境变化对动物生态的影响。他们预计，随着时间的推移，栖息地的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guild结构的差异。研究区域之间栖息地变化的差异为测试小型哺乳动物对栖息地变化的生态反应的一致性和可预测性提供了机会。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。

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.