Rescuing the red dog: using the Pleistocene fossil record of the dhole (Cuon alpinus, Pallas 1811) to inform modern conservation initiatives

Dhole(Cuon alpinus，Pallas 1811)是一种中型进化的独特犬科动物，目前分布在东南亚各地。尽管受到猎物枯竭、栖息地破坏和竞争的威胁，但人们对洞穴的分布和生态知之甚少。针对洞穴的保护战略即使不是在所有范围内的国家都完全缺乏，也是不够的。种群主要居住在保护区内，以寻找其他有魅力的物种，但它们是否足以保护洞穴尚不确定。物种分布模型(SDMS)将地理参考的发生记录与环境变量联系起来，可以用来确定合适的洞穴保护策略。然而，现代井眼分布数据稀少，并且受人类交互作用的影响很大。这可能会给模型预测带来偏差。将洞穴更新世化石记录纳入模型可以减少环境截断的影响，并扩大对洞穴生态位的理解。然而，洞穴化石记录的偏差可能会不确定地增加到模型输出中。该博士项目旨在通过以下方式解决这些问题：(1)提供从中更新世开始的可靠和有质量保证的洞穴分布年表；(2)利用贝叶斯方法量化洞穴现代和化石记录中的不确定性；(3)评估化石记录对洞穴生态和保护的贡献。

The dhole (Cuon alpinus, Pallas 1811) is a medium-sized evolutionary distinct canid, currently distributed across Southeast Asia. Despite being threatened by prey depletion, habitat destruction and competition, very little is known about the dhole's distribution and ecology. Dhole-specific conservation strategies are inadequate, if not entirely absent in all range countries. Populations reside mainly in protected areas for other charismatic species, but their adequacy for dhole conservation is undetermined. Species distribution models (SDMs) that relate georeferenced occurrence records to environmental variables could be used to identify suitable dhole conservation strategies. However, modern dhole distribution data is sparse and heavily influenced by human interactions. This could introduce bias into model projections. Incorporating the dholes Pleistocene fossil record into models could reduce the effects of environmental truncation and broaden understanding of the dholes' ecological niche. However, bias in the dhole's fossil records may increase uncertainly into model outputs. This PhD project aims to address these issues by (1) producing a robust and quality assured chronology of the dhole's distribution from the Middle Pleistocene onwards, (2) quantifying the uncertainty in the dholes modern and fossil records using Bayesian approaches, and (3) assessing the contribution of fossil records to dhole ecology and conservation.