The ecology of Neanderthal and sapiens explored through a food web approach
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1Food webs are networks of trophic interactions among species. Research on food webs focuses on the structure of direct and indirect interactions among diverse species to get some clues about the functioning of ecosystems and what role species play in this functioning (i.e. providing energy, spreading impacts, affecting ecosystem stability). Beyond its application to study nowadays ecosystems, the 'food web approach' has also been used to study trophic relationships in the fossil record of extinct ecosystems. Our communication will present the reconstruction of the ecological interactions that characterized the transition between Homo neanderthalensis and H. sapiens to address long-term ecological processes and highlight interactions of different Homo species with other animal taxa. Such reconstruction has been based on the literature reporting paleontological fossil records from an area in which the two Homo species coexisted. Exploiting such records, we identified interactions of the type "who eats whom" involving humans and other ecosystem components. We mapped out this array of interactions as a network, which we analyzed through the methods of network analysis. Besides a graphical representation of the food web these methods allow highlighting reciprocal dependency between nodes for food acquisition, sharing and spreading impacts, competitive and cooperative interactions, factors controlling growth. The hope is that the results of the food web analysis may open up new perspectives to frame the problem of the survival of H. sapiens compared with Neanderthals.
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Cristiano Vizzo, Antonio Bodini, Silvana Condemi et Anna Degioanni, « The ecology of Neanderthal and sapiens explored through a food web approach », Bulletins et mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris [En ligne], 36(S) | 2024, mis en ligne le 23 décembre 2023, consulté le 18 mars 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/bmsap/13761 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/bmsap.13761
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