Collaborative Research: EVOLUTION OF NORTH AMERICAN SMALL MAMMAL COMMUNITIES IN RESPONSE TO OLIGO-MIOCENE LANDSCAPE CHANGE

合作研究：北美小哺乳动物群落响应寡中新世景观变化的进化

• 批准号: 2322803
• 负责人: Samantha Hopkins
• 金额: $ 27.99万
• 依托单位: University of Oregon Eugene
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-08-01 至 2026-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2322803&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; EVOLUTION; NORTH; AMERICAN

This project aims to understand the relationship over millions of years between vegetation and mammalian communities. Small mammals in particular are more sensitive to habitat change than their larger relatives, so the team will examine this relationship over time and space to develop a robust understanding of how they respond to changing landscapes. This work is critical both to understanding how habitat changes in the past have shaped the animals living on the landscape and to developing models that will allow us to recognize and potentially mitigate impacts of current human-driven habitat alteration on mammalian species. The work will also integrate undergraduate and graduate students and K-12 teachers into the process, giving them all a view into ongoing research and disseminating the research results as the work is being conducted so it can advance public understanding of ecology and evolution. The team will study patterns of habitat change and ecological evolution in the U.S. Great Plains and Northwest from 30 to 5 million years ago. They will collect fossil small mammals and sediment for phytolith extraction through fieldwork in the Northwest to build a record of the ecological structure of faunas and floras to compare with the well-studied Great Plains. Mammal diet, body size, and locomotion will be estimated from dental and skeletal proxies. These data will be used to compare the structure of small mammal communities to local habitat data inferred from phytolith assemblages, to determine the influence of changing habitats on faunal ecology. They expect that changes through time in habitat openness and heterogeneity will lead to differences in the guild structure of small mammals in those ecosystems. Differences in habitat changes between the study regions offer an opportunity to test the degree to which ecological responses of small mammals to habitat change are consistent and predictable.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目旨在了解植被和哺乳动物群落之间数百万年来的关系。特别是小型哺乳动物比它们的大型亲戚对栖息地变化更敏感，因此研究小组将随着时间和空间的推移检查这种关系，以深入了解它们如何应对不断变化的景观。这项工作对于了解过去的栖息地变化如何塑造了生活在这片土地上的动物以及开发模型至关重要，这些模型将使我们能够认识并潜在地减轻当前人类驱动的栖息地改变对哺乳动物物种的影响。这项工作还将把本科生、研究生和 K-12 教师纳入这一过程，让他们所有人都能了解正在进行的研究，并在工作进行过程中传播研究结果，从而促进公众对生态和进化的理解。该团队将研究 30 至 500 万年前美国大平原和西北地区的栖息地变化和生态演化模式。他们将通过在西北地区的实地考察收集小型哺乳动物化石和沉积物以提取植硅体，以建立动植物群生态结构的记录，并与经过深入研究的大平原进行比较。哺乳动物的饮食、体型和运动将根据牙齿和骨骼代理进行估计。这些数据将用于将小型哺乳动物群落的结构与从植硅体组合推断的当地栖息地数据进行比较，以确定栖息地变化对动物生态的影响。他们预计，随着时间的推移，栖息地开放性和异质性的变化将导致这些生态系统中小型哺乳动物的行会结构出现差异。研究区域之间栖息地变化的差异提供了一个机会来测试小型哺乳动物对栖息地变化的生态反应的一致性和可预测程度。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，被认为值得支持以及更广泛的影响审查标准。