Tutkimuksen ja opetuksen kuvaus

Understanding how changes in habitat boundary conditions (e.g. temperature, precipitation, ecosystem productivity) influenced the distribution of species and their adaptive traits throughout evolutionary history is crucial for deciphering the 'expected' profile of modern biodiversity as determined by the biosphere's baseline mechanisms, and hence identifying the long-term effects human activities have already exerted on ecosystems. My role under Dr Juha Saarinen's Non-Analogue Ecosystems of the Past project (NEPA) is to examine shifting mechanisms by which trait distribution in Afro-Eurasian mammalian herbivore faunas correlated with their habitat conditions over the past 15 million years. The most salient non-analogue aspect of these ancient biomes is the far greater diversity and distribution of megafaunal herbivores such as rhinos, proboscideans (elephant relatives), giraffids and wild horses than today both within and across faunal communities. This yields two competing yet non-mutually exclusive hypotheses to be tested: (a) do compositionally non-analogue palaeofaunas accentuate the non-analogue nature of ancient ecosystem boundary conditions; or (b) masking aspects of habitat conditions that may be considered analogous with present-day ecosystem case studies?