The impact of climate change on the structure of Pleistocene mammoth steppe food webs

TL;DR

This study reconstructs Pleistocene mammoth steppe food webs using isotope analysis and network theory, revealing how climate change and glacial events affected predator-prey interactions and community structure across different regions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel integration of stable isotope data and network analysis to study long-term ecological interactions during the Pleistocene.

Findings

Large felids' diets were constrained and influenced by Rangifer abundance post-LGM.

Beringian communities were highly modular before LGM, with modularity decreasing during the LGM.

Community modularity partially recovered after glacial retreat, influenced by geographic insularity.

Abstract

Species interactions shape predator-prey networks, impacting community structure and, potentially, ecological dynamics. It is likely that global climatic perturbations that occur over long periods of time have a significant impact on species interactions patterns. However, observations of how these patterns change over time are typically limited to extant communities, which is particularly problematic for communities with long-lived species. Here we integrate stable isotope analysis and network theory to reconstruct patterns of trophic interactions for six independent mammalian communities that inhabited mammoth steppe environments spanning western Europe to eastern Alaska during the Pleistocene. We use a Bayesian mixing model to quantify the proportional contribution of prey to the diets of local predators, and assess how the structure of trophic interactions changed across space and the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), a global climatic event that severely impacted mammoth steppe communities. We find that large felids had diets that were more constrained than other co-occurring predators, and largely influenced by an increase in {\it Rangifer} abundance after the LGM. Moreover, the structural organization of Beringian and European communities strongly differed: compared to Europe, species interactions in Beringian communities before the LGM were highly compartmentalized, or modular. This modularity was lost during the LGM, and partially recovered after the glacial retreat, and we suggest that changes in modularity among predators and prey may have been driven by geographic insularity.