Dataset Information

Late Quaternary horses in Eurasia in the face of climate and vegetation change.

ABSTRACT: Wild horses thrived across Eurasia until the Last Glacial Maximum to collapse after the beginning of the Holocene. The interplay of climate change, species adaptability to different environments, and human domestication in horse history is still lacking coherent continental-scale analysis integrating different lines of evidence. We assembled temporal and geographical information on 3070 horse occurrences across Eurasia, frequency data for 1120 archeological layers in Europe, and matched them to paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental simulations for the Late Quaternary. Climate controlled the distribution of horses, and they inhabited regions in Europe and Asia with different climates and ecosystem productivity, suggesting plasticity to populate different environments. Their decline in Europe during the Holocene appears associated with an increasing loss and fragmentation of open habitats. Europe was the most likely source for the spread of horses toward more temperate regions, and we propose both Iberia and central Asia as potential centers of domestication.

SUBMITTER: Leonardi M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6059734 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Late Quaternary horses in Eurasia in the face of climate and vegetation change.

Leonardi Michela M Boschin Francesco F Giampoudakis Konstantinos K Beyer Robert M RM Krapp Mario M Bendrey Robin R Sommer Robert R Boscato Paolo P Manica Andrea A Nogues-Bravo David D Orlando Ludovic L

Science advances 20180725 7

Wild horses thrived across Eurasia until the Last Glacial Maximum to collapse after the beginning of the Holocene. The interplay of climate change, species adaptability to different environments, and human domestication in horse history is still lacking coherent continental-scale analysis integrating different lines of evidence. We assembled temporal and geographical information on 3070 horse occurrences across Eurasia, frequency data for 1120 archeological layers in Europe, and matched them to ...[more]

PMID: 30050986

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Project description:Climate change impacts the structure, functioning, and distribution of species and ecosystems. It will shift ecosystem boundaries, potentially affecting vulnerable ecosystems, such as tropical Africa's high mountain ecosystems, i.e., afroalpine ecosystems, and their highly susceptible uniquely adapted species. However, ecosystems along these mountains are not expected to respond similarly to the change. The ericaceous woody vegetation, located between the low-elevation broadleaf forests and high-elevation afroalpine vegetation, are anticipated to be affected differently. We hypothesize that projected climate change will result in an upward expansion and increasing dominance of ericaceous vegetation, which will negatively impact the endemic rich afroalpine ecosystems of the extensive Sanetti plateau. Hence, we modeled the impact of future climate change on the distribution of ericaceous vegetation and discussed its effect on bordering ecosystems in the Bale Mountains. We applied four familiar correlative modeling approaches: bioclim, domain, generalized linear methods, and support vector machines. We used WorldClim's bioclimatic variables as environmental predictors and two representative concentration pathways (RCPs) of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report climate change scenarios, namely RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 for future climate projection. The results indicate increased ericaceous vegetation cover on the midaltitude of northwestern and northern parts of the massif, and the Sanetti plateau. We observed upward range expansion and increase of close ericaceous vegetation in midaltitudes, while receding from the lower range across the massif. Moreover, the current ericaceous vegetation range correlates to the temperature and precipitation trends, reaffirming the critical role of temperature and precipitation in determining species distributions along elevational gradients. The results indicate the high likelihood of considerable changes in this biodiversity hotspot in Eastern Africa.

Dataset Information

Late Quaternary horses in Eurasia in the face of climate and vegetation change.

Publications

Late Quaternary horses in Eurasia in the face of climate and vegetation change.

Similar Datasets

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