Isotope Ecology and Paleoecology in East Africa in the Past 4 Ma

这个资助项目的目标是研究东非主要哺乳动物群体的饮食在过去400万年里是如何变化的。该项目将使用稳定的同位素和牙齿形态，它们会随着饮食偏好的变化而进化，以了解饮食随时间的变化。该项目将提供有关饮食与牙齿形态的进化过程的见解，并将更好地理解如何使用同位素来解释人类和其他哺乳动物的饮食。该项目包括一个强大的国际合作团队，一个将犹他州学生与肯尼亚学生联系起来的教育和推广计划，并将有助于了解生态时间尺度上的饮食演变。在东非，早期人类进化的地方，稳定的同位素提供了一个重要的工具，可以用来研究饮食如何随着时间的推移而变化。先前的研究表明，一些哺乳动物群体的现代饮食偏好与它们最亲密的祖先有很大不同。通过使用现代观察和在动物园的受控环境中工作，将有可能更好地量化与生理学相关的饮食-组织-同位素关系（例如，后肠与前肠消化）。此外，碳同位素将用于研究放牧与浏览偏好，镁同位素将用于研究营养结构。此外，该项目的研究内容与项目更广泛的影响目标紧密结合，学生将学习如何使用同位素研究来自不同地区的不同家畜（如山羊、绵羊、牛）的饮食偏好和空间差异。

The goal of this funded project is to study how diets of the major mammal groups in East Africa have changed over the past 4 million years. The project will use stable isotopes and tooth morphology, which evolves in response to diet preference, to understand changes to diet over time. This project will provide insight into the evolutionary processes that relate diet to tooth morphology, and it will provide a better understanding of how to use isotopes to interpret diet in humans and other mammals. This project includes a strong team of international collaborators, an education and outreach program that will link students in Utah with students in Kenya, and will contribute to understanding dietary evolution at ecological timescales. In East Africa, where early humans evolved, stable isotopes provide an important tool that can be used to study how diets have changed over time. Previous work has shown that the modern dietary preferences for some mammalian groups is quite different than their most closely related ancestors. By using modern observations and working in the controlled environments of zoos, it will be possible to better quantify the diet-tissue-isotope relationship that is related to physiology (e.g., hindgut versus foregut digestion). In addition, carbon isotopes will be used to study grazing versus browsing preferences, and Mg-isotopes will be used to study trophic structure. Further, the research components of the project are strongly integrated with the broader impacts goals of the project, and students will learn how to use isotopes to study dietary preferences and spatial variation between different domestic animals (e.g., goats, sheep, cattle) from different regions.