Sebastián Abades

Emergence of social complexity among coastal hunter-gatherers in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile

The emergence of complex cultural practices in simple hunter-gatherer groups poses interesting questions on what drives social complexity and what causes the emergence and disappearance of cultural innovations. Here we analyze the conditions that underlie the emergence of artificial mummification in the Chinchorro culture in the coastal Atacama Desert in northern Chile and southern Peru. We provide empirical and theoretical evidence that artificial mummification appeared during a period of increased coastal freshwater availability and marine productivity, which caused an increase in human population size and accelerated the emergence of cultural innovations, as predicted by recent models of cultural and technological evolution. Under a scenario of increasing population size and extreme aridity (with little or no decomposition of corpses) a simple demographic model shows that dead individuals may have become a significant part of the landscape, creating the conditions for the manipulation of the dead that led to the emergence of complex mortuary practices.

Determinants of Density–Body Size Scaling Within Food Webs and Tools for Their Detection

Abstract The density mass–relationship (DMR) between abundance and body size is a key attribute of biodiversity organisation. The identification of the determinants of the DMR has consolidated as a major research area, focused on both statistical and ecological issues. Here, we advance the connection between food webs and DMR, by showing how gape limitation could determine the amount of resources available and consumption by enemies, the number of modes, scaling exponents, and intercepts of the DMR. The widely used statistical approach of applying ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions to log-transformed data of recorded densities—or histogram frequencies—and mass has been shown to be biased and to present statistical problems. Improvements have been suggested for all these methods, with the maximum likelihood (ML) approach emerging as the best one for both frequency distributions and fits to untransformed data in bivariate relationships. The combination of these methods with tools to detect more than one scaling in a dataset, such as segmented regressions, could detect more complex patterns, to test and validate theoretical expectations. At least five different DMRs have been reported in the literature to date, but it is not evident whether variations in the reported patterns originate from attributes of the studied systems or if they are determined by properties of particular DMR used. We analysed these five DMRs and related statistical tools in a metacommunity composed of 18 local communities of temporary ponds. DMRs presented steeper slopes than those usually reported, with evidence for changes in the scaling regime across size classes. Evaluation of the performance of alternative statistics confirmed ML estimates as the best method available, even with small sample sizes. To understand DMR, it is clear that explicit attention should be paid to the ecological mechanisms involved in each one of the alternative approaches, and to the statistical tools that can be used for its detection.

Fire, percolation thresholds and the savanna forest transition: a neutral model approach

Summary 1. Recent empirical and theoretical analyses have suggested that biomes could correspond to alternative equilibrium states; one such example is the transition between forest, savanna and treeless states. 2. Fire supposes to be a key functional component of savanna ecosystems and is a powerful predictor of tree cover that can differentiate between forest and savanna ecosystems. Interestingly, empirical evidence suggests that fire occurrence drops at a threshold tree cover near 40%. Since savannas are ecosystems characterized by a discontinuous tree canopy cover immersed in a continuous grass layer a 40% of tree cover implies around 60% cover of grasses, which are the flammable component of this ecosystem. 3. In this article, we hypothesize that the observed common pattern of 40% tree cover versus 60% in grass cover often reported for savanna ecosystems is the outcome of a spatial phase transition associated with the existence of a critical percolation threshold for fire spread. 4. To test this hypothesis, we developed a spatially explicit neutral metacommunity model to explore the relationship between species cover and the emergence of percolation patterns. The model is intended to emulate savanna dynamics under neutrality assumptions. 5. Using a statistical mechanical approach, we show that a second-order phase transition behaviour is observed for the probability that a grass species develops a percolating cluster. Using a simple finite size scaling analysis, the percolation threshold pc for our model was estimated to be in the range of 0.53–0.62. 6. Synthesis. Our results point out that the emergence of a spatial phase transition associated with percolation is a robust result of neutral metacommunity dynamics with a critical threshold of space occupancy close to pc ~ 0.6, which supports our hypothesis that the empirically observed 40% tree cover (60% grass cover) is associated with a percolation threshold for C4 grasses that in turn imply the existence of a spatially connected or spanning cluster of grass cover over which fire can spread.

Can we infer plant facilitation from remote sensing? a test across global drylands

Facilitation is a major force shaping the structure and diversity of plant communities in terrestrial ecosystems. Detecting positive plant-plant interactions relies on the combination of field experimentation and the demonstration of spatial association between neighboring plants. This has often restricted the study of facilitation to particular sites, limiting the development of systematic assessments of facilitation over regional and global scales. Here we explore whether the frequency of plant spatial associations detected from high-resolution remotely sensed images can be used to infer plant facilitation at the community level in drylands around the globe. We correlated the information from remotely sensed images freely available through Google Earth with detailed field assessments, and used a simple individual-based model to generate patch-size distributions using different assumptions about the type and strength of plant-plant interactions. Most of the patterns found from the remotely sensed images were more right skewed than the patterns from the null model simulating a random distribution. This suggests that the plants in the studied drylands show stronger spatial clustering than expected by chance. We found that positive plant co-occurrence, as measured in the field, was significantly related to the skewness of vegetation patch-size distribution measured using Google Earth images. Our findings suggest that the relative frequency of facilitation may be inferred from spatial pattern signals measured from remotely sensed images, since facilitation often determines positive co-occurrence among neighboring plants. They pave the road for a systematic global assessment of the role of facilitation in terrestrial ecosystems.

The modulating role of group stability on fitness effects of group size is different in females and males of a communally rearing rodent.

Group size may influence fitness benefits and costs that emerge from cooperative and competitive interactions in social species. However, evidence from plural breeding mammals indicates that group size is insufficient to explain variation in direct fitness, implying other attributes of social groups were overlooked. We studied the natural population of a social rodent during 5 years to test the hypothesis that social stability - in terms of group composition - modulates the effects of increasing number of breeding females (a proxy of communal rearing) and males on the number of offspring weaned (sired) and on the number of offspring weaned (sired) surviving to breeding age (two proxies of direct fitness). We quantified the effects of social stability (measured as changes in female or male group members between mating and the onset of lactation) on these fitness measures. We used live trapping, telemetry and DNA markers to determine social and fitness measures. Social stability in degus was variable in terms of the number of changes in group composition across groups. Low stability was mostly due to mortality and emigration of group members. Results supported a modulating role of social stability on the relationship between group size and the number of offspring weaned (sired). Stability in female and male group composition were both modulators of fitness to females and males. The modulatory role of stability was sex specific, where high social stability was often fitness beneficial to the females. Instead, low social stability was fitness enhancing to the males.

Sociality of Octodontomys gliroides and other octodontid rodents reflects the influence of phylogeny

Abstract Multiple ecological factors are known to drive variation in social behavior. However, group-living in some species appears to be highly conserved, suggesting a phylogenetic influence. In this study, we evaluated both scenarios using intraspecific and interspecific comparisons across octodontid rodents. We first examined 2 different populations of Andean degu (Octodontomys gliroides), representing 2 extremes of a climate vegetation gradient across the Andes range. We evaluated how ecological variation in terms of abundance and distribution of food resources, predation risk, and burrowing costs predicted interpopulation variation in group size and range-area overlap (2 proxies of sociality). We estimated these measures of sociality from livetrapping and radiotelemetry. We then used phylogenetic methods to determine whether sociality exhibits a phylogenetic signal and reconstructed the ancestral state of sociality across the family Octodontidae. Overall activity of females and males of O. gliroides was greater during nighttime than daytime. Across populations we found significant differences in ecology, including abundance and distribution of food, predation risk, and burrowing costs. However, populations were similar in terms of group size and range-area overlap. The phylogenetic approach revealed a strong and significant phylogenetic signal associated with sociality, where this behavior was present early during the evolution of octodontid rodents. Together, these findings imply that sociality of O. gliroides is not linked to current population differences in ecology. Resumen La variación en la conducta social ha sido atribuida a múltiples factores ecológicos. Sin embargo, la vida en grupo en algunas especies es un rasgo altamente conservado, sugiriendo una influencia filogenética. En este estudio, se evaluó ambos escenarios usando comparaciones intraespecíficas e interespecíficas a través de roedores octodóntidos. En primer lugar se evaluaron 2 poblaciones de degu Andino (Octodontomys gliroides) que representan 2 extremos de un gradiente climático y de vegetación a través de la Cordillera de los Andes. Se evaluó como la variación en términos de abundancia y distribución de recursos alimenticios, riesgo de depredación, y costos asociados a cavar madrigueras podrían predecir la variación interpoblacional en tamaño de grupo y solapamiento del ámbito de hogar (2 medidas de sociabilidad). Estas medidas fueron estimadas con datos de trampeo y radiotelemetría. Además, se utilizaron métodos filogenéticos para determinar si el rasgo social presenta señal filogenética, y de esta manera reconstruir el estado ancestral de la sociabilidad a través de la familia Octodontidae. Se encontraron diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre las poblaciones en términos de ecología, incluyendo abundancia y distribución de recursos alimenticios, riesgo de depredación, costos asociados a cavar madrigueras. Sin embargo, el tamaño de grupo y solapamiento del ámbito de hogar fueron similares entre ambas poblaciones. El análisis filogenético reveló una fuerte y significativa señal filogenética asociada a la sociabilidad, y que esta conducta estuvo presente temprano en la evolución de los roedores octodóntidos. En conjunto, estos resultados implican que la vida en grupo en O. gliroides no está relacionada a las diferencias en ecología en las poblaciones actuales.

Scaling Biodiversity: Biodiversity power laws

The last ten years have been marked by important discoveries and scientificadvances in our understanding of biodiversity. The emergence of new fields,such as bioinformatics, ecoinformatics, and computational ecology (Helly et al.,1995; Spengler, 2000; Green et al., 2005) has brought about an informationalrevolution by making available massive data sets on the composition, distribu-tion and abundance of biodiversity from local to global scales and from genesto ecosystems. This has in turn changed biodiversity sciences, expanding thescale of analysis of ecological systems wherein biodiversity resides. Whilethe 1970s and 1980s were marked by studies at local scales, the 1990s weremarked by gaining access to regional, continental and global scale analyses.In parallel, and in part as a consequence of the above trend, there has been ashift from approaches that emphasize the highly variable and idiosyncraticnature of ecological systems to a view that emphasizes the action of firstprinciples, natural laws and zeroth order approaches (the macroscopicapproach hereafter).The small-scale approach can be illustrated by a representative quotationfrom Diamond and Case (1986, p. x): ‘‘The answers to general ecological ques-tions are rarely universal laws, like those of physics. Instead, the answers areconditional statements such as: for a community of species with properties A

Immunocompetence of breeding females is sensitive to cortisol levels but not to communal rearing in the degu (Octodon degus)

One hypothesis largely examined in social insects is that cooperation in the context of breeding benefits individuals through decreasing the burden of immunocompetence and provide passive immunity through social contact. Similarly, communal rearing in social mammals may benefit adult female members of social groups by reducing the cost of immunocompetence, and through the transfer of immunological compounds during allonursing. Yet, these benefits may come at a cost to breeders in terms of a need to increase investment in individual immunocompetence. We examined how these potential immunocompetence costs and benefits relate to reproductive success and survival in a natural population of the communally rearing rodent, Octodon degus. We related immunocompetence (based on ratios of white blood cell counts, total and specific immunoglobulins of G isotype titers) and fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (FGC) levels of adults immunized with hemocyanin from the mollusk Concholepas concholepas to measures of sociality (group size) and communal rearing (number of breeding females). Offspring immunocompetence was quantified based on circulating levels of the same immune parameters. Neither female nor offspring immunocompetence was influenced by communal rearing or sociality. These findings did not support that communal rearing and sociality enhance the ability of females to respond to immunological challenges during lactation, or contribute to enhance offspring condition (based on immunocompetence) or early survival (i.e., to 3months of age). Instead, levels of humoral and cellular components of immunocompetence were associated with variation in glucorcorticoid levels of females. We hypothesize that this covariation is driven by physiological (life-history) adjustments needed to sustain breeding.

Limited and fitness-neutral effects of resource heterogeneity on sociality in a communally rearing rodent

Contrasting scenarios have been proposed to explain how resource heterogeneity influences group living or sociality. First, sociality may result from individuals in larger groups attaining net fitness benefits by monopolizing access to resources (“resource-defense” hypothesis). Second, sociality may be the fitness-neutral outcome of multiple individuals using a territory with sufficient resources to sustain a group of conspecifics (“resource-dispersion” hypothesis). While previous studies have tended to support the resource-dispersion hypothesis, these analyses have typically examined only 1 or a few predictions, making it difficult to distinguish between the 2 alternatives. We conducted a 4-year field study of Octodon degus to quantify the effects of spatial heterogeneity in food and refuge distributions on group size and 2 components of reproductive success (per capita number of offspring, offspring survival) in this plural breeding and communal rearing rodent. We found only a small effect of heterogeneity of food resources on group size; the effect food resource distribution on group territory size varied across years. Group size did not vary with spatial variation in group territory size and quality. Importantly, there was no covariation between group size and quality of an individuals territory (i.e., a measure of individual access to resources), or between this measure of territory quality and reproductive success, implying no resource-based benefits to social degus. Overall, our results were more consistent with fitness-neutral relationships among spatial heterogeneity of resources, sociality, and territory size. The resource-dispersion hypothesis, however, did not provide a complete explanation for degu socioecology.

Finite size scaling in the local abundances of geographic populations

We analyzed the statistical distribution of intra-specific local abundances for a set North American breeding bird species. We constructed frequency plots for every species and found that they showed long-tail power-law behavior, truncated at an upper abundance cut-off value. Based on finite size scaling arguments, we investigated whether frequency curves may be considered scaled copies of each other. Data collapse was possible after taking powers of the total abundance of each species, in order to correct deviations from the underlying universal finite size scaling function (UFSS). The UFSS power law exponent oscillated in time within the regime of unbounded variance, which is consistent with the wild fluctuations that characterize ecological phenomena. We speculate that our results may eventually be linked to other law-like macroecological phenomena, such as energetic constraints reported in allometric scaling.