The endemic Giant Molerat as synanthropic landscape engineer: past and present population dynamics and their link to vegetation patterns and human land-use on the Bale Mountains

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The contribution of the novel project to the overarching aim of the RU, the reconstruction of the environmental history of the afro-alpine ecosystem, is to disentangle the role of the endemic Giant Molerat (GMR - Tachyoryctes macrocephalus) as a natural biotic landscape engineer from anthropogenic transformation in the Bale Mountains. To achieve this, comprehensive and spatially explicit ecological and genetic analyses of the GMR are needed. The goal of the project is therefore to contribute to this challenge, first, by detailed field surveys on the distribution of GMRs across the Bale Mountains. In order to assess their ecology and current population genetic structure. This will be done in close cooperation with the project "geo-radar-based quantification of mounds; humidity and land-use gradients; development of sequencing Approach" and the project "vegetation characteristics". Second, we will link field observations to remote sensing information on GMR burrows and other environmental data in order to upscale the GMR's ecosystem engineering role and population structure to the landscape scale. Excavations of GMR bones during Phase 1 of the RU open up the possibility to compare extant population genetic analyses with ancient DNA (aDNA) analyses. Then, as a third aim, we will compare current and ancient genetic data of GMRs and their burrows to reconstruct the landscape history. In summary, we will upscale the GMR's role as ecosystem engineer to the landscape scale and determine present and past population dynamics of GMRs in the afro-alpine ecosystem and the upper Ericaceous Belt to resolve the presence of humans in the Bale Mountains.