Identifying what drove the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on the continents remains one of the most contested topics in historical science. This is especially so in Australia, which lost 90% of its large species by 40,000 years ago, more than half of them kangaroos. Determining causation has been obstructed by a poor understanding of their ecology. Using dental microwear texture analysis, we show that most members of Australia's richest Pleistocene kangaroo assemblage had diets that were much more generalized than their craniodental anatomy implies. Mixed feeding across most kangaroos pinpoints dietary breadth as a key behavioral adaptation to climate-driven fluctuations in vegetation structure, dispelling the likelihood that late Pleistocene climatic variation was a primary driver of their disappearance.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.adq4340 | DOI Listing |
Ecol Evol
January 2025
Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, Government of Nepal Nepal.
Understanding species' dietary ecology and interspecific interactions is crucial for multi-species conservation planning. In Central Asia and the Himalayas, wolves have recolonized snow leopard habitats, raising considerable concern about resource competition between these apex predators. Using micro-histological analysis of prey species remains (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTerrestrial bird populations on small, species depauperate islands often experience selection for generalist foraging traits via ecological release; however, it is unclear how island conditions may uniquely influence other life-history characteristics of small-island birds, such as the unusually high rates of molt-breeding overlap exhibited on the island of Grenada. To explore this question, we collected data on the life cycles and diets of 10 commonly occurring Grenadian bird species to assess the degree of generalist foraging and evaluate how seasonal patterns in diet niche breadth and diet overlap among species relates to the high rates of molt-breeding overlap. We evaluated three hypotheses explaining drivers of molt-breeding overlap (constraints on molt rate, unpredictable food abundance, and limited duration of food abundance), and suggest that widespread overlap in small-island tropical communities may be the result of generalist foraging adaptations and restricted time periods of sufficient invertebrate availability for successful breeding and molt to occur.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScience
January 2025
College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Bedford Park, South Australia, Australia.
Identifying what drove the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on the continents remains one of the most contested topics in historical science. This is especially so in Australia, which lost 90% of its large species by 40,000 years ago, more than half of them kangaroos. Determining causation has been obstructed by a poor understanding of their ecology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeerJ
December 2024
Jiangxi Provincial Key Laboratory of Conservation Biology, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, Jiangxi, China.
Background: Food provides essential nutrients and energy necessary for animals to sustain life activities. Accordingly, dietary niche analysis facilitates the exploration of foraging strategies and interspecific relationships among wildlife. The vegetation succession has reduced understory forage resources (.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Child Psychol Psychiatry
December 2024
Department of Psychiatry, Center for Mental Health Innovation, Oregon Health Science University, Portland, Oregon, USA.
The aim of this narrative review is to summarize evidence relating the importance of nutrient intake from diet and supplementation for paediatric mental health. We begin by reviewing several mechanisms by which nutrients maximize brain health, including enabling metabolic reactions to occur, supporting mitochondrial function, reducing inflammation and assisting with detoxification. Circumstances that may contribute to an individual requiring additional nutrients beyond what are available in the diet, such as consumption of nutritionally depleted food, individual differences in biological need, long-term medication use and gut-brain health needs are then reviewed.
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