Dental microwear of sympatric rodent species sampled across habitats in southern Africa: Implications for environmental influence

作     者：Jenny H.E.BURGMAN Jennifer LEICHLITER Nico L.AVENANT Peter S.UNGAR 

作者机构：Environmental Dynamics ProgramUniversity of ArkansasFayettevilleArkansasUSA Department of AnthropologyUniversity of Colorado BoulderBoulderColoradoUSA National Museum and University of the Free StateBloemfonteinSouth Africa Department of AnthropologyUniversity of ArkansasFayettevilleArkansasUSA 

出 版 物：《Integrative Zoology》 (整合动物学（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2016年第11卷第2期

页      面：111-127页

核心收录：

学科分类：0202[经济学-应用经济学] 02[经济学] 020205[经济学-产业经济学] 

基　　金：funded by US National Science Foundation Grant SBR0948283 to PSU 

主　　题：diet grit tooth wear 

摘      要：Dental microwear textures have proven to be a valuable tool for reconstructing the diets of a wide assortment of fossil ***,some studies have recently questioned the efficacy of this approach,suggesting that aspects of habitat unrelated to food preference,especially environmental grit load,might have a confound­ing effect on microwear patterning that obscures the diet *** we evaluate this hypothesis by examining microwear textures of 3 extant sympatric rodent species that vary in diet breadth and are found in a variety of habitat types:Mastomys coucha,Micaelamys namaquensis and Rhabdomys *** sample each of these species from 3 distinct environmental settings in southern Africa that differ in rainfall and vegetative cover:Na­ma-Karoo shrublands(semi-desert)and Dry Highveld grasslands in the Free State Province of South Africa,and Afromontane(wet)grasslands in the highlands of *** differences between habitat types are ev­ident for some of the species,inconsistency in the pattern suggests that the microwear signal is driven by vari­ation in foods eaten rather than grit-level per *** is clear that,at least for species and habitats sampled in the current study,environmental grit load does not swamp diet-related microwear signatures.