Scientists have been able to use detailed depictions of animals on ancient Egyptian artifacts to assemble a detailed record of the large mammals that lived in the Nile Valley over the past 6,000 years. A new analysis of this record shows that the ecosystem in the region has become progressively less stable due to the extinction of certain species, most likely due to the drying climate and the growth of human settlements.
The study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that many extinctions of local mammal species have led to a steady decline in the stability of the animal communities in the Nile Valley. Back when there were many species in the community, the loss of a single species had little impact on how the ecosystem functioned, whereas now it is much more sensitive to such alterations.
This is according to Justin Yeakel, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. Around six thousand years ago, there were 37 species of large-bodied mammals in Egypt, but that number has declined to a mere eight in modern times. Among the species recorded in the ancient artifacts were lions, wild dogs, elephants, oryx, hartebeest, and giraffe.
“What was once a rich and diverse mammalian community is very different now,” Yeakel said. “As the number of species declined, one of the primary things that was lost was the ecological redundancy of the system. There were multiple species of gazelles and other small herbivores, which are important because so many different predators prey on them. When there are fewer of those small herbivores, the loss of any one species has a much greater effect on the stability of the system and can lead to additional extinctions.”
Read more about the story at International Business Times.
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