Post by UKarchaeology on Apr 1, 2016 15:18:21 GMT
A new study of humans on Sanak Island, Alaska and their historical relationships with local species suggests that despite being super-generalist predators, the food gathering behaviors of the local Aleut people were stabilizing for the ecosystem.
The findings provide insights into how human roles and behavior impact complex ecological networks and offer new quantitative tools for studying sustainability.
With a team of ecologists and archeologists, the Santa Fe Institute's Vice President for Science Jennifer Dunne wanted to understand the niche humans filled in Sanak's marine ecosystems by compiling and analyzing local food web data.
"It's the first highly detailed ecological network data to include humans, which allows us to ask questions about how they compare in their roles to other predators," says Dunne. "Unlike most ecological studies that ignore humans or consider them as external actors, our analysis includes them as an integral part of the ecosystem."
For roughly 7,000 years, the Sanak Aleuts hunted marine mammals and fishes in the nearby open water and gathered shellfish and algae closer to shore. Dunne and her colleagues put together a precise picture of the local marine food webs by studying the bones and shells left behind in middens (trash heaps), through oral histories gathered from Aleut elders, and ecological data.
Full story: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-02/sfi-hhp021716.php
The findings provide insights into how human roles and behavior impact complex ecological networks and offer new quantitative tools for studying sustainability.
With a team of ecologists and archeologists, the Santa Fe Institute's Vice President for Science Jennifer Dunne wanted to understand the niche humans filled in Sanak's marine ecosystems by compiling and analyzing local food web data.
"It's the first highly detailed ecological network data to include humans, which allows us to ask questions about how they compare in their roles to other predators," says Dunne. "Unlike most ecological studies that ignore humans or consider them as external actors, our analysis includes them as an integral part of the ecosystem."
For roughly 7,000 years, the Sanak Aleuts hunted marine mammals and fishes in the nearby open water and gathered shellfish and algae closer to shore. Dunne and her colleagues put together a precise picture of the local marine food webs by studying the bones and shells left behind in middens (trash heaps), through oral histories gathered from Aleut elders, and ecological data.
Full story: www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-02/sfi-hhp021716.php