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Learning from ancient water management: Archaeology's role in modern-day climate change adaptations
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Climate change is altering our environment and societies worldwide have to devise adaptation strategies. Water management strategies are becoming especially important. In the past, societies had to adapt in order to survive as well. Communities often practised long‐term sustainable agriculture. By understanding the ways in which ancient communities were successful at or failed in attaining social‐ecological resilience through water management archeologists can provide important information for modern communities facing similar problems. Archeology's long time perspective is very valuable. However, archeologists are confronted with a number of issues. Archeology can only study the material remains of past societies, not the living communities. Not all human activity translates into material residue and not all materials survive. Moreover, people will not demonstrate completely rational cause‐and‐effect behavior, but ideology and beliefs, which archeology can only poorly attest, will also have influenced decisions. Nevertheless, archeology can bring a unique perspective to the debate on climate change adaptation: archeology can falsify or corroborate sustainability claims, ancient water management techniques may still be a resilient mode of subsistence and ancient techniques often rely on relatively simple technology allowing for easier adoption. When transposing ancient water management techniques to modern situations it is important to involve stakeholders from an early stage, to incorporate traditional knowledge systems as much as possible and most importantly to ascertain whether physical and socio‐cultural circumstances are comparable. Archeological knowledge on ancient sustainability and water management is not a panacea for all climate related aridification, but can contribute a unique longue durée perspective.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2017
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Late Miocene survival of a hyper-longirostrine dolphin and the Neogene to Recent evolution of rostrum proportions among odontocetes
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RBINS Staff Publications 2021
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Dental microwear study of pigs from the classical site of Sagalassos (SW Turkey) as an aid for the reconstruction of husbandry practices in ancient times
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RBINS Staff Publications
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Combined Hybridization Capture and Shotgun Sequencing for Ancient DNA Analysis of Extinct Wild and Domestic Dromedary Camel
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RBINS Staff Publications
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DNA barcoding fishes from the Congo and the Lower Guinean provinces: Assembling a reference library for poorly inventoried fauna
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Abstract The Congolese and Lower Guinean ichthyological provinces are understudied hotspots of the global fish diversity. Here, we barcoded 741 specimens from the Lower and Middle Congo River and from three major drainage basins of the Lower Guinean ichthyological province, Kouilou-Niari, Nyanga and Ogowe. We identified 194 morphospecies belonging to 82 genera and 25 families. Most morphospecies (92.8%) corresponded to distinct clusters of DNA barcodes. Of the four morphospecies present in both neighbouring ichthyological provinces, only one showed DNA barcode divergence <2.5%. A small fraction of the fishes barcoded here (12.9% of the morphospecies and 16.1% of the barcode clusters representing putative species) were also barcoded in a previous large-scale DNA analysis of freshwater fishes of the Lower Congo published in 2011 (191 specimens, 102 morphospecies). We compared species assignments before and after taxonomic updates and across studies performed by independent research teams and observed that most cases of inconsistent species assignments were due to unknown diversity (undescribed species and unknown intraspecific variation). Our results report more than 17 putative new species and show that DNA barcode data provide a measure of genetic variability that facilitates the inventory of underexplored ichthyofaunae. However, taxonomic scrutiny, associated with revisions and new species descriptions, is indispensable to delimit species and build a coherent reference library.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2019
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Parasite introduction with an invasive goby in Belgium: double trouble?
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Non-indigenous species may have negative impacts on the native fauna in their competition for food and habitat, but they can also introduce non-indigenous parasite species, with sometimes devastating consequences. Cointroduction of parasites should therefore be carefully monitored, but this aspect is mostly overlooked. The round goby Neogobius melanostomus (Pallas, 1814) and the tubenose goby Proterorhinus semilunaris (Heckel, 1937), both known for their invasiveness, have recently been discovered in Belgium. Here, we morphologically and genetically document the cointroduction of the Ponto-Caspian Gyrodactylus proterorhini Ergens, 1967, originally described on tubenose goby in southern Slovakia. Because of their direct life cycle and extraordinary reproductive capacities, gyrodactylid monogenean parasites can readily invade new areas together with the host. Moreover, G. proterorhini has a wide host range and might therefore represent a threat to other gobiid fishes. The Gyrodactylus parasite found on the Belgian round goby population is probably acquired through secondary infection from local fish, as suggested by molecular phylogenetic analysis.
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No RBINS Staff publications
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Allostratigraphy and paleontology of the lower Miocene Chilcatay Formation in the Zamaca area, East Pisco basin, southern Peru
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RBINS Staff Publications 2019
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Pioneer farming in southeast Europe during the early sixth millennium BC: Climate-related adaptations in the exploitation of plants and animals
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The Old World farming system arose in the semi-arid Mediterranean environments of southwest Asia. Pioneer farmers settling the interior of the Balkans by the early sixth millennium BC were among the first to introduce southwest Asian-style cultivation and herding into areas with increasingly continental temperate conditions. Previous research has shown that the bioarchaeological assemblages from early farming sites in southeast Europe vary in their proportions of plant and animal taxa, but the relationship between taxonomic variation and climate has remained poorly understood. To uncover associations between multiple species and environmental factors simultaneously, we explored a dataset including altitude, five bioclimatic and 30 bioarchaeological variables (plant and animal taxa) for 57 of the earliest farming sites in southeast Europe using Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA). An extension of correspondence analysis, CCA is widely used in applied ecology to answer similar questions of species-environment relationships, but has not been previously applied in prehistoric archaeology to explore taxonomic and climatic variables in conjunction. The analyses reveal that the changes in plant and animal exploitation which occurred with the northward dispersal of farmers, crops and livestock correlate with south-north climate gradients, and emphasize the importance of adaptations in the animal domain for the initial establishment of farming beyond the Mediterranean areas.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2018
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Prevalence of Angiostrongylus vasorum, Aelurostrongylus abstrusus and Crenosoma vulpis larvae in native slug populations in Germany
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RBINS Staff Publications 2018
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The Neoproterozoic Upper Ruvubu Alkaline Plutonic Complex (Burundi) revisited: large-scale syntectonic emplacement, magmatic differentiation and late-stage circulations of fluids
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RBINS Staff Publications 2019
