Estuarine dispersal of an invasive Holarctic predator (Esox lucius) confirmed in North America.

The capacity for a non-native species to become invasive largely hinges on existing dispersal capacity or adaptation of dispersal in new environments. Here we provide early evidence that invasive Northern Pike (Esox lucius), a Holarctic freshwater top predator, illegally introduced in the late 1950s into Southcentral Alaska, are now dispersing through estuarine corridors. This finding represents the first known documentation of estuary use and dispersal by Northern Pike in North America, exacerbating conservation concerns for already depressed populations of culturally and economically important species such as salmonids.

Mammoth featured heavily in Western Clovis diet.

Ancient Native American ancestors (Clovis) have been interpreted as either specialized megafauna hunters or generalist foragers. Supporting data are typically indirect (toolkits, associated fauna) or speculative (models, actualistic experiments). Here, we present stable isotope analyses of the only known Clovis individual, the 18-month-old Anzick child, to directly infer maternal protein diet.

Design, development, and implementation of IsoBank: A centralized repository for isotopic data.

Stable isotope data have made pivotal contributions to nearly every discipline of the physical and natural sciences. As the generation and application of stable isotope data continues to grow exponentially, so does the need for a unifying data repository to improve accessibility and promote collaborative engagement. This paper provides an overview of the design, development, and implementation of IsoBank (www.

Assessing contemporary Arctic habitat availability for a woolly mammoth proxy.

Interest continues to grow in Arctic megafaunal ecological engineering, but, since the mass extinction of megafauna ~ 12-15 ka, key physiographic variables and available forage continue to change. Here we sought to assess the extent to which contemporary Arctic ecosystems are conducive to the rewilding of megaherbivores, using a woolly mammoth (M. primigenius) proxy as a model species.

A female woolly mammoth's lifetime movements end in an ancient Alaskan hunter-gatherer camp.

Woolly mammoths in mainland Alaska overlapped with the region's first people for at least a millennium. However, it is unclear how mammoths used the space shared with people. Here, we use detailed isotopic analyses of a female mammoth tusk found in a 14,000-year-old archaeological site to show that she moved ~1000 kilometers from northwestern Canada to inhabit an area with the highest density of early archaeological sites in interior Alaska until her death.