An Ecomorphological Comparative Study of Extant and Late Holocene Sigmodontinae (Rodentia, Cricetidae) Assemblages from
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ORIGINAL PAPER
An Ecomorphological Comparative Study of Extant and Late Holocene Sigmodontinae (Rodentia, Cricetidae) Assemblages from Central-Eastern Argentina Sofía Barbero 1,2
&
Pablo Teta 1,2
&
Guillermo H. Cassini 1,2,3
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The anthropic effect associated with worldwide European settlements over the last 500 years has caused dramatic environmental changes, modified regional patterns of biodiversity, and often led to local or complete extinctions. The sigmodontine rodents of Bahía Samborombón (Humid Pampas, central-eastern Argentina) constitute a good case study: a late Holocene archaeological site allowed us to compare a pre-European settlement assemblage (12 species) with the extant one (nine species). We used linear morphometrics (16 cranial and ten mandibular measurements) to assess interspecific morphological variations of the masticatory apparatus in relation to dietary habits for each assemblage. Even though sigmodontines have a tendency towards omnivory, groups based on dietary preference only overlapped partially. Size was one of the main variables involved in niche segregation, and shape characteristics such as rostrum elongation or mandible robustness were linked to different diets. We found that a combination of dietary preference and size was associated with extinctions. The main morphospace change between the two assemblages was related to the local extinction of the three greater insectivores and the smallest graminivore, located towards the center of the assemblage’s morphospace. An insectivore was incorporated, involving no significant changes in the general morphospace. Graminivores and larvivores were not affected. Our study sheds light on the causes of local extinctions of small mammals at the Humid Pampas, a phenomenon that had never been studied from an ecomorphological approach. Keywords Anthropic effect . Rodents . Cricetid . Ecomorphology . Local extinction . Pampa
Introduction Dramatic landscape changes, primarily due to anthropic activities, took place worldwide during the Holocene, and especially over the last 500 years (MacPhee and Flemming 1999; Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-020-09497-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Sofía Barbero [email protected] 1
División Mastozoología, Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia”, Av. Ángel Gallardo 470, C1405DJR Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
2
Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
3
Departamento de Ciencias Básicas, Universidad Nacional de Luján, Ruta 5 y Av. Constitución s/n, Luján B6700, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Turvey 2009). Such activities led to local and complete extinctions, to the extent where virtually all of the species and population losses from this time can be interpreted as humancaused events (Turvey and Fritz 2011). This p
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