5月16日：The ecosystem consequences of the peopling of Australia: 50,000+ years of change

主  讲 人：Corey J. A. Bradshaw（教授）

主  持 人：何芳良（教授）

开始时间：5月16日上午10：00

讲座地址：资环楼148

主办单位：生态与环境科学学院、科技处

报告人简介：

Professor Corey J. A. Bradshaw joined Flinders University (Australia) in January 2017 as the Matthew Flinders Fellow in Global Ecology. He is the Director of the Global Ecology Laboratory and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, and he leads its Modelling Node at Flinders. He received PhD in Zoology from the University of Otago, New Zealand in 1999. He has published 3 books, 1 edited book, 13 book chapters, and more than 280 peer-reviewed journal articles.  

For more information: https://www.flinders.edu.au/people/corey.bradshaw

报告内容简介:

Australia is the world's driest inhabited continent and represents one of the greatest of humanity's achievements: rising to the challenge of thriving in an arid continent over 50,000 years ago. At the time anatomically modern humans first set foot on the continent we call 'Sahul' (mainland Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania joined during periods of lower sea levels), the ecosystems and climate they encountered were vastly different than today. However, our lack of understanding of how these ancient people arrived and succeeded in making a living in one of toughest environments on Earth is rivalled only by our limited knowledge of how they subsequently shaped Sahul's ecosystems. Shortly after human arrival in Sahul, where a rich assemblage of large vertebrates (up to three tonnes) once lived, there was a rapid loss of every single native terrestrial animal larger than about 40 kg. Most of these species were herbivores, meaning that their loss likely modified the entire ecosystem through different feedbacks on vegetation, although the degree to which this occurred is still debated. Good data describing these relationships are rare, and inferences are often biased in space and time because of differential preservation of the older evidence. New statistical approaches and recent models of the population dynamics of ancient humans coupled with fossil records, archaeological data, and palaeo-climate simulations are shedding light on the origins and ecological consequences of the initial peopling of Sahul. I will present and discuss the most likely places where these first people would have landed on Sahul's shores and the size of the populations that needed to arrive, establish, and expand to survive in this new, extreme, and challenging environment. I will then provide new insights on the causes of megafauna extinctions resulting from intricate and synergistic effects between these first people and variable climate conditions.