Cats are hypercarnivorous, opportunistic animals that have adjusted to anthropogenic environments since the Neolithic period. Through humans, either by direct feeding and/or scavenging on food scraps, the diet of cats has been enriched with animals that they cannot kill themselves (e.g., large mammals, fish). Here, we conducted carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratio analysis to reconstruct the diet of medieval cats and investigate cat-human interactions in two medieval harbor sites (Qalhât, Oman and Siraf, Iran). The analysis included 28 cat individuals and 100 associated marine and terrestrial faunal samples pertaining to > 30 taxa. The isotopic results indicate a high marine protein-based diet for the cats from Qalhât and a mixed marine-terrestrial (C4) diet for the cats from Siraf. Cats at these sites most likely scavenged on both human food scraps and refuse related to fishing activities, with differences in the two sites most likely associated with the availability of marine resources and/or the living conditions of the cats. By shedding light on the dietary habits of cats from two medieval harbors in the Arabian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, this study illustrates the potential of stable isotope analysis in reconstructing human-cat interactions in the past.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2023
Planting has been widely adopted to battle the loss of salt marshes and to establish living shorelines. However, the drivers of success in salt marsh planting and their ecological effects are poorly understood at the global scale. Here, we assemble a global database, encompassing 22,074 observations reported in 210 studies, to examine the drivers and impacts of salt marsh planting. We show that, on average, 53% of plantings survived globally, and plant survival and growth can be enhanced by careful design of sites, species selection, and novel planted technologies. Planting enhances shoreline protection, primary productivity, soil carbon storage, biodiversity conservation and fishery production (effect sizes = 0.61, 1.55, 0.21, 0.10 and 1.01, respectively), compared with degraded wetlands. However, the ecosystem services of planted marshes, except for shoreline protection, have not yet fully recovered compared with natural wetlands (effect size = −0.25, 95% CI −0.29, −0.22). Fortunately, the levels of most ecological functions related to climate change mitigation and biodiversity increase with plantation age when compared with natural wetlands, and achieve equivalence to natural wetlands after 5–25 years. Overall, our results suggest that salt marsh planting could be used as a strategy to enhance shoreline protection, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2024
The earliest Crocodylia from Asia have been represented so far only by alligatoroids and planocraniids. Although definitive crocodyloids are not known until the late Eocene, it has been hypothesized that Asiatosuchus-like basal crocodyloids originated in Asia before the late Palaeocene. In this paper, we describe a new fossil crocodyloid from the lower Palaeocene of Qianshan Basin, Anhui Province, China. The skull and lower jaw fragment exhibit several characteristics typical of juvenile crocodylians. They also display a combination of features not seen in any other taxon, warranting the erection of a new species and genus, Qianshanosuchus youngi gen. & sp. nov. Its affinities are tested in phylogenetic analyses based on two recent character matrices of Eusuchia. To assess the effect of juvenile characteristics on the outcome of the phylogenetic analyses, juvenile specimens of extant crocodylian taxa are analysed in the same way, showing that the effect of their ontogenetic stage on their placement in the tree is minimal. Our analyses point to a basal crocodyloid position for Q. youngi. With these findings, the presence of Crocodyloidea in Asia is extended to the early Palaeocene, 15–20 Myr earlier than formerly thought. Furthermore, our results corroborate previous hypotheses of a Palaeocene dispersal route of Asiatosuchus-like crocodyloids from Asia into Europe.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2022 OA
