Grupo I+D+i EvoAdapta (Evolución Humana y Adaptaciones durante la Prehistoria), Dpto. Ciencias Históricas, Universidad de Cantabria, Avd, Los Castros 44, 39005 Santander, Spain.
Mott MacDonald Ltd., 22 Station Road, Cambridge, UK.
Sci Adv. 2023 Sep 22;9(38):eadi4099. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adi4099.
It has been proposed that climate change and the arrival of modern humans in Europe affected the disappearance of Neanderthals due to their impact on trophic resources; however, it has remained challenging to quantify the effect of these factors. By using Bayesian age models to derive the chronology of the European Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition, followed by a dynamic vegetation model that provides the Net Primary Productivity, and a macroecological model to compute herbivore abundance, we show that in continental regions where the ecosystem productivity was low or unstable, Neanderthals disappeared before or just after the arrival of . In contrast, regions with high and stable productivity witnessed a prolonged coexistence between both species. The temporal overlap between Neanderthals and is significantly correlated with the carrying capacity of small- and medium-sized herbivores. These results suggest that herbivore abundance released the trophic pressure of the secondary consumers guild, which affected the coexistence likelihood between both human species.
有人提出，气候变化和现代人进入欧洲，影响了营养资源，从而导致尼安德特人灭绝；然而，要量化这些因素的影响一直具有挑战性。通过使用贝叶斯年龄模型来推导欧洲中-上新世过渡的年代学，然后使用提供净初级生产力的动态植被模型和计算食草动物丰度的宏生态学模型，我们表明，在生态系统生产力较低或不稳定的大陆地区，尼安德特人在. 出现之前或之后就已经灭绝。相比之下，生产力较高且稳定的地区则见证了两种物种之间的长时间共存。尼安德特人和. 之间的时间重叠与中小型食草动物的承载能力显著相关。这些结果表明，食草动物的丰度释放了次级消费者群体的营养压力，这影响了两种人类物种共存的可能性。
