Marco Vidal-Cordasco

During the Late Pleistocene, Europe witnessed the onset of a mass extinction process and transformations in human culture, diet and demography. While most research has focused on understanding the causes of this biodiversity crisis, the consequences of these extinctions on the human-environment relationships remain overlooked. This project will disentangle the effects of biodiversity losses on the food chain regulation processes and their linkage with the transformations in the human niche in northern Iberia. Sedimentary ancient DNA recovered from two dated peat bog cores and two new archaeological sites, along with data obtained from 43 additional archaeo-paleontological levels in the region will be used to evaluate the evolution of the mammal and plant richness. High-resolution palynological records and stable oxygen and carbon isotopes from stalagmites will be used to test climate simulations. This information will be incorporated into a dynamic vegetation model to quantify the effects of climate changes on plant biomass. A macroecological model will compute the impact of plant richness and biomass transformations on the abundance of mammals. By computing the biomass flux in the terrestrial food webs, we will provide new insights into the role of human populations in the structure and vulnerability of trophic networks.