title: Collapse of an ecological network in Ancient Egypt.
abstract: The dynamics of ecosystem collapse are fundamental to determining how and why biological communities change through time, as well as the potential effects of extinctions on ecosystems. Here, we integrate depictions of mammals from Egyptian antiquity with direct lines of paleontological and archeological evidence to infer local extinctions and community dynamics over a 6,000-y span. The unprecedented temporal resolution of this dataset enables examination of how the tandem effects of human population growth and climate change can disrupt mammalian communities. We show that the extinctions of mammals in Egypt were nonrandom and that destabilizing changes in community composition coincided with abrupt aridification events and the attendant collapses of some complex societies. We also show that the roles of species in a community can change over time and that persistence is predicted by measures of species sensitivity, a function of local dynamic stability. To our knowledge, our study is the first high-resolution analysis of the ecological impacts of environmental change on predator-prey networks over millennial timescales and sheds light on the historical events that have shaped modern animal communities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064; Earth to Oceans Research Group, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6; Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501; jdyeakel@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Justin D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Yeakel
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade de São Paulo, CEP 05508-090, São Paulo, SP, Brazil;
authors.forename: Mathias M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Pires
authors.affiliation: Department of Engineering and Mathematics, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UB, United Kingdom; Max Planck Institute for the Dynamics of Complex Systems, D-01187 Dresden, Germany;
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rudolf
authors.affiliation: Departments of Anthropology and Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755; and.
authors.forename: Nathaniel J
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5916-418X
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Dominy
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064.
authors.forename: Paul L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Koch
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ecologia, Universidade de São Paulo, CEP 05508-090, São Paulo, SP, Brazil;
authors.forename: Paulo R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Guimarães
authors.affiliation: Department of Engineering and Mathematics, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UB, United Kingdom; Max Planck Institute for the Dynamics of Complex Systems, D-01187 Dresden, Germany;
authors.forename: Thilo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Gross
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D057231:Climate Change / Q000266:history; D056631:Colony Collapse / Q000266:history*; D017753:Ecosystem; D000076144:Egypt, Ancient; D053476:Extinction, Biological; D020387:Food Chain; D049690:History, Ancient; D008322:Mammals; D010163:Paleontology; D011157:Population Dynamics
keywords: community stability; dynamic sensitivity; historical ecology; redundancy; trophic interactions