Reconstructing the ecology and extinction dynamics of Late Quaternary megafauna in China

了解过去生态系统的物种多样性和结构，以及它们随着时间的推移受到人类活动和气候变化的影响的程度，对于了解随着时间的推移人类对生物多样性影响的规模和模式，以便为现代保护科学做出预测性假设是至关重要的。对欧洲、北美和澳大利亚第四纪大型动物的过去多样性以及大型动物更替的年表和模式进行了广泛的研究，目的是了解人类或气候(或其他原因)是否是导致巨型巨鹿(巨鹿)或猛犸象(毛猛犸象)等众所周知的大型物种大规模灭绝的主要原因。中国目前是世界上众多生物群保护的热点，也是一个由于栖息地破坏和过度开发而使许多哺乳动物物种濒临灭绝的国家。尽管如此，旨在更好地了解晚更新世生态系统发生了什么的区域范围内的研究有限。我的研究旨在收集中国晚更新世大型哺乳动物物种过去时空分布的所有现有数据，以重建过去现存和灭绝的大型动物物种的分布，并记录这些物种是如何随着时间的变化而变化的。从这个基线开始，我将把这些范围与气候变化事件以及已知的人类进化和人口变化的时间等时间相关因素进行比较，并研究这些外部驱动因素如何与动物群组成的变化相匹配。还将有可能将动物群的变化与其他古环境指数进行比较和联系，例如通过花粉数据绘制的过去植被变化图，以及考古遗址的微型哺乳动物聚集物突出显示的当地环境变化。

Understanding the species diversity and structure of past ecosystems and the extent to which they have been affected through time by human activities and climate change is essential to understand the magnitude and pattern of human impacts on biodiversity through time, in order to make predictive hypotheses for modern conservation science. Extensive research has been conducted on the past diversity of Quaternary megafauna, and the chronology and pattern of megafaunal turnover, for Europe, North America and Australia, with the aim of understanding if humans or climate (or another reason) was the principle cause for the mass extinctions that wiped out large, well known species such as Megaloceros giganteus (giant deer) or Mammuthus primigenius (woolly mammoth). China is currently a world hotspot for conservation across numerous biomes and is a country with many mammal species at risk due to habitat destruction and overexploitation. Despite this, there are limited region-wide studies aimed at developing a better understanding of what was happening to ecosystems during the Late Pleistocene. My research aims to gather together all existing data on the past spatiotemporal distributions of large mammal species in China across the Late Pleistocene, to reconstruct past distributions of living and extinct megafaunal species and document how these changed over time. From this baseline I will then compare these ranges with temporal correlates such as climate change events and timing of known human evolutionary and demographic changes and examine how these external drivers match changes in faunal composition. It will also be possible to compare and link faunal changes to other palaeoenvironmental indices, such as past vegetation changes mapped through pollen data and changes to local environments highlighted by assemblages of micromammals from archaeological sites.