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65 results for “megafauna”
Data from: Seed dispersal anachronisms: rethinking the fruits extinct megafauna ate
BACKGROUND: Some neotropical, fleshy-fruited plants have fruits structurally similar to paleotropical fruits dispersed by megafauna (mammals >103 kg), yet these dispersers were extinct in South America 10–15 Kyr BP. Anachronic dispersal systems are best explained by interactions with extinct animals and show impaired dispersal resulting in altered seed dispersal dynamics. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We introduce an operational definition of megafaunal fruits and perform a comparative analysis of 103 Neotropical fruit species fitting this dispersal mode. We define two megafaunal fruit types based on previous analyses of elephant fruits: fruits 4–10 cm in diameter with up to five large seeds, and fruits >10 cm diameter with numerous small seeds. Megafaunal fruits are well represented in unrelated families such as Sapotaceae, Fabaceae, Solanaceae, Apocynaceae, Malvaceae, Caryocaraceae, and Arecaceae and combine an overbuilt design (large fruit mass and size) with either a single or few (<3 seeds) extremely large seeds or many small seeds (usually >100 seeds). Within-family and within-genus contrasts between megafaunal and non-megafaunal groups of species indicate a marked difference in fruit diameter and fruit mass but less so for individual seed mass, with a significant trend for megafaunal fruits to have larger seeds and seediness. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Megafaunal fruits allow plants to circumvent the trade-off between seed size and dispersal by relying on frugivores able to disperse enormous seed loads over long-distances. Present-day seed dispersal by scatter-hoarding rodents, introduced livestock, runoff, flooding, gravity, and human-mediated dispersal allowed survival of megafauna-dependent fruit species after extinction of the major seed dispersers. Megafauna extinction had several potential consequences, such as a scale shift reducing the seed dispersal distances, increasingly clumped spatial patterns, reduced geographic ranges and limited genetic variation and increased among-population structuring. These effects could be extended to other plant species dispersed by large vertebrates in present-day, defaunated communities.
Data from: Seasonal dynamics of megafauna on the deep West Antarctic Peninsula shelf in response to variable phytodetrital influx
The deep West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) shelf is characterized by intense deposition of phytodetritus during spring/summer months, while very little food material reaches the seafloor during winter. The response of the shelf benthic megafauna to this highly variable food supply is still poorly understood. In order to characterize the deposition of phytodetritus and the megabenthic community response, we deployed a seafloor time-lapse camera at approximately 590 m depth on the mid WAP shelf west of Anvers Island for 15 months. Seafloor photographs were taken at intervals of 12 or 24 h nearly continuously from 9 December 1999 (austral winter) to 20 March 2001 (summer) and analysed for phytodetritus deposition and megafaunal dynamics. Seafloor images indicated a marked seasonal arrival of greenish phytodetritus, with large interannual and seasonal variability in the coverage of depositing phytodetrital particles. The surface-deposit-feeding elasipod holothurians Protelpidia murrayi and Peniagone vignoni dominated the epibenthic megafauna throughout the year, frequently constituting more than 80% of the megafaunal abundance, attaining total densities of up to 2.4 individuals m−2. Elasipod abundances were significantly higher in summer than winter. During summer periods of high phytodetrital flux, Pr. murrayi produced faecal casts at higher rates, indicating intensified population-level feeding activity. In March–June 2000, faecal casts lasted longest, suggesting lower horizontal bioturbation activity during autumn–winter. Our data indicate that the Pr. murrayi population increases its feeding rates in response to increasing amounts and/or lability of organic matter on the sediment surface. Assuming that this species feeds on the top millimetre of the sediment, we estimate that, during periods of high phytodetrital flux, the Pr. murrayi population reworks one square metre of sediment surface in approximately 287 days. We suggest that Pr. murrayi is an important species for organic-carbon recycling on the deep WAP shelf, controlling the availability of deposited labile phytodetritus to the broader shelf benthic community.
Beringia megafauna extinctions during last deglacial climatic transitions
<p>The causes of last deglacial megafauna extinctions in Beringia remain highly debated, with evidence pointing to climate change, human hunting, or a combination of both. One key uncertainty is associated with the current poor understanding of regional climate evolution in part due to lack of integrated proxy-model analyses, though studies of the globe repeatedly documented large climate shifts of this time period. Here, we present terrestrial temperature and moisture reconstructions since the Last Glacial Maximum by magnetic and geochemical measurements in a sediment core collected from the northern shelf of the Bering Sea. We reconstruct the marine-terrestrial environmental teleconnections, corresponding to warmer and wetter conditions between 14,700 and 13,500 years ago associated with the Bølling/Allerød interstadial (BA). Our climate model analysis confirms proxy data and attributes the climatic amelioration to increased regional heat and moisture transport from the low-latitude North Pacific Ocean, accompanied by a northward expansion of the Westerly Jet. The increased temperature and moisture availability facilitated the expansion of shrub tundra to the expanse of the previously dominating grass and forb rangelands, which appears to lead to the disappearance of megafauna grazers during the onset of BA. Our findings emphasize a crucial role of climate-driven habitat losses in contributing to the turnover in mammal communities across the last deglacial Beringia.</p>
Megafruit and megafauna diversity are positively associated, while megafruit traits are related to abiotic factors, in Tropical Asia
<p class="Body"><b>Aim</b></p> <p class="Body">For tens of millions of years, herbivorous megafauna were abundant across the globe, fulfilling important ecological roles including seed dispersal. Megafruits are very large fruits that are dispersed most effectively by megafauna. However, megafruits also occur in ecosystems where megafauna are extinct or were never present, emphasizing our incomplete understanding of megafauna-megafruit relationships. Here we use the complex biogeography of tropical Asia to investigate how megafruit diversity and traits are associated with the diversity of megafauna, smaller animals, and abiotic factors.</p> <p class="Body"><b>Location</b></p> <p class="Body">Tropical Asia, from the Indian subcontinent in the west to tropical China in the north to the Maluku archipelago (Indonesia) in the east.</p> <p class="Body"><b>Time period</b></p> <p class="Body">Late Pleistocene to the present day.</p> <p class="Body"><b>Major taxa studied</b></p> <p class="Body">Megafauna (body weight >500 kg) that consume fruits, including stegodons, elephants, rhinoceroses, giant tapirs, and large bovids. Fleshy-fruited plant species across the region with a fruit width >40 mm (i.e., megafruits).</p> <p class="Body"><b>Methods</b></p> <p class="Body">We compiled a list of all megafruits along with selected plant, fruit, and seed traits in 16 subregions across tropical Asia. We explored biogeographic patterns in megafruit diversity and traits in relation to the diversities of past and present megafauna, large- and medium-sized animals and abiotic factors (mean temperature, mean precipitation, precipitation seasonality, insularity).</p> <p class="Body"><b>Results</b></p> <p class="Body">We identified 496 megafruits in tropical Asia. Megafruit diversity was highest in subregions with high megafaunal diversity, particularly extant species. Megafruit traits were influenced most strongly by abiotic factors (mainly temperature and land area), and weakly by megafauna and smaller dispersers.</p> <p class="Body"><b>Main conclusions</b></p> <p class="Body">Our results are consistent with megafauna maintaining or responding to megafruit diversity, but variation in megafruit traits is primarily associated with abiotic factors. Given the massive megafaunal losses in tropical Asia since the Late Pleistocene, it is important to identify fruit traits that can increase megafauna-dependence and thus vulnerability to these losses.</p>
Data for: The role of habitat fragmentation in Pleistocene megafauna extinction in Eurasia by Mondanaro et al.
<p>This dataset provides the complete list of data and necessary information in order to reproduce all the analyses performed in the paper:<br> "Mondanaro, A., Di Febbraro, M., Melchionna, M., Maiorano, L., Di Marco, M., Edwards, N.R., Holden, P.B., Castiglione, S., Rook, L., Raia, P. (2021)<br> The role of habitat fragmentation in Pleistocene megafauna extinction in Eurasia. Ecography, online version"</p> <p>The idea<b> </b>that than several small, rather than a single large, habitat areas, should hold the highest total species richness (the so-called SLOSS debate) brings into question the importance of habitat fragmentation to extinction risk. SLOSS studies are generally addressed over a short time scale, potentially ignoring the long-term dimension of extinction risk. Here, we provide the first long-term evaluation of the role of habitat fragmentation in species extinction, focusing on 22 large mammal species that lived in Eurasia during the last 200,000 years. By combining species distribution models and landscape pattern analysis, we compared temporal dynamics of habitat spatial structure between extinct and extant species, estimating size, number, and degree of geographical isolation of their suitable habitat patches. Our results evidenced that extinct mammals went through considerable habitat fragmentation during the last glacial period and started to fare worse than extant species from about 50 ka. In particular, our modelling effort constrains the fragmentation of habitats into a narrow time window, from 46 to 36 kilo years ago, surprisingly coinciding with known extinction dates of several megafauna species. Landscape spatial structure was the second most important driver affecting megafauna extinction risk (ca. 38% importance), after body mass (ca. 39%) and followed by dietary preferences (ca. 20%). Our results indicate a major role played by landscape fragmentation on extinction. Such evidence provides insights on what might likely happen in the future, with climate change, habitat loss, and fragmentation acting as the main forces exerting their negative effects on biodiversity.</p>
MEGAFAUNA_Pole2Pole_eDNA_data
<p>This dataset contains fish eDNA sequences from the 12S mitochondrial gene. eDNA has been collected in 263 stations, 68 sites, in 11 marine regions. Data collection was performed between 2017 and 2020.</p> <p>Raw sequences have been processed through a bioinformatic pipeline, merged, demultiplexed, dereplicated, clustered as OTUs (operational taxonomic units) and assigned to a taxa.</p> <p>The codes to analyse the data can be found at : https://github.com/lmathon/Pole2Pole_eDNA.</p> <p>The data are used to study the distribution of fish eDNA sequences at a large spatial scale, and study the influence of environmental, socioeconomic and geographic factors on sequence diversity and distribution.</p>
Late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions have strongly reduced mammalian vegetation consumption
<p>Scrips and data for recreating the results and figures in the paper Late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions have strongly reduced mammalian vegetation consumption<br> DOI: 10.1111/geb.13723<br> Journal Global Ecology and Biogeography:<br> <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/geb.13723">https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/geb.13723</a></p> <p>The three folders work as stand alone R-Studio projects, for estimating metabolic rates, densities, and the finally calculating total carbon consumption and creating summary statistics and figures. They require PHYLACINE v. 1.2.1 (https://zenodo.org/record/3690867) to be in another folder next to them.</p>
Data from: What North America’s skeleton crew of megafauna tells us about community disassembly
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Data from: Foraging impacts of Asian megafauna on tropical rainforest structure and biodiversity
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Data for: The role of habitat fragmentation in Pleistocene megafauna extinction in Eurasia by Mondanaro et al.
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Data from: Measuring the surrogacy potential of charismatic megafauna species across taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity on a megadiverse island
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Data from: Seed dispersal anachronisms: rethinking the fruits extinct megafauna ate
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Data from: Megafauna decline have reduced pathogen dispersal which may have increased emergent infectious diseases
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Rethinking megafauna
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Data from: Using local ecological knowledge to monitor threatened Mekong megafauna in Lao PDR
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Data from: Seasonal dynamics of megafauna on the deep West Antarctic Peninsula shelf in response to variable phytodetrital influx
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Data from: Changes in the diet and body size of a small herbivorous mammal (Sigmodon hispidus, hispid cotton rat) following the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinction
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Data from: Dung beetle-megafauna trophic networks in Singapore’s fragmented forests
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Megafruit and megafauna diversity are positively associated, while megafruit traits are related to abiotic factors, in Tropical Asia
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Data from: White-tailed deer as the last megafauna dispersing seeds in Neotropical dry forests: the role of fruit and seed traits
Endozoochory is a prominent form of seed dispersal in tropical dry forests. Most extant megafauna that perform such seed dispersal are ungulates, which can also be seed predators. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) is one of the last extant megafauna of Neotropical dry forests, but whether it serves as a legitimate seed disperser is poorly understood. We studied seed dispersal patterns and germination after white-tailed deer gut passage in a tropical dry forest in southwest Ecuador. Over 23 mo, we recorded ca 2000 seeds of 11 species in 385 fecal samples. Most seeds belonged to four species of Fabaceae: Chloroleucon mangense, Senna mollissima, Piptadenia flava, and Caesalpinia glabrata. Seeds from eight of the 11 species dispersed by white-tailed deer germinated under controlled conditions. Ingestion did not affect germination of C. mangense and S. mollissima, whereas C. glabrata showed reduced germination. Nevertheless, the removal of fruit pulp resulting from ingestion by white-tailed deer could have a deinhibition effect on germination due to seed release. Thus, white-tailed deer play an important role as legitimate seed dispersers of woody species formerly considered autochorous. Our results suggest that more research is needed to fully understand the ecological and evolutionary effects of the remaining extant megafauna on plant regeneration dynamics in the dry Neotropics.
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
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DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.