Global hunter-gatherer population densities constrained by influence of seasonality on diet composition
Zhu, Dan (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Galbraith, Eric D. (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Reyes-García, Victoria (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Ciais, Philippe (The Cyprus Institute. Climate and Atmosphere Research Center)

Data:	2021
Resum:	The dependence of hunter-gatherers on local net primary production (NPP) to provide food played a major role in shaping long-term human population dynamics. Observations of contemporary hunter-gatherers have shown an overall correlation between population density and annual NPP, but with a thousand-fold variation in population density per unit NPP that remains unexplained. Here we build a process-based hunter-gatherer population model embedded within a global terrestrial biosphere model, which explicitly addresses the extraction of NPP through dynamically-allocated hunting and gathering activities. The emergent results reveal a strong, previously unrecognized effect of seasonality on population density via diet composition, whereby hunter-gatherers consume high fractions of meat in regions where growing seasons are short, leading to greatly reduced population density due to trophic inefficiency. This seasonal carnivory bottleneck largely explains the wide variation in population density per unit NPP, and questions the prevailing usage of annual NPP as the proxy of carrying capacity for ancient humans. Our process-based approach has the potential to greatly refine our understanding of dynamical responses of ancient human populations to past environmental changes.
Ajuts:	European Commission 682602 European Commission 771056
Nota:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
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Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió sotmesa a revisió
Publicat a:	Nature ecology & evolution, Vol. 5, Issue 11 (November 2021) , p. 1536-1545, ISSN 2397-334X

DOI: 10.1038/s41559-021-01548-3
PMID: 34504317

Preprint 32 p, 2.4 MB

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