Abstract
The reliability of using the abundance of Sporormiella spores as a proxy for the presence and abundance of megaherbivores was tested in southern Brazil. Mud-water interface samples from nine lakes, in which cattle-use was categorized as high, medium, or low, were assayed for Sporormiella representation. The sampling design allowed an analysis of both the influence of the number of animals using the shoreline and the distance of the sampling site from the nearest shoreline. Sporormiella was found to be a reliable proxy for the presence of large livestock. The concentration and abundance of spores declined from the edge of the lake toward the center, with the strongest response being in sites with high livestock use. Consistent with prior studies in temperate regions, we find that Sporormiella spores are a useful proxy to study the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna or the arrival of European livestock in Neotropical landscapes.
Highlights
The Pleistocene megafauna were animals that exceeded 100 kilograms (Johnson 2002, Martin & Steadman 1999), such as ground sloth, mastodon, and glyptodonts
In South America, the Late Pleistocene extinction resulted in the loss of 57 genera of megafauna (Barnosky & Lindsey 2010, Martin & Klein 1984, Martin & Steadman 1999)
Percentages of Sporormiella spores were significantly higher at locations with high cattle use in comparison with locations with medium and low cattle use (p o 0.001; Figure 4; Table 2)
Summary
The Pleistocene megafauna were animals that exceeded 100 kilograms (Johnson 2002, Martin & Steadman 1999), such as ground sloth, mastodon, and glyptodonts. With the arrival of Europeans, domesticated megafauna, such as cows, horses and oxen, were introduced to many areas Both in pre-history and megafauna produce a wide range of effects on terrestrial ecosystems that can disturb and alter the functioning of the ecosystem (Ripple & Van Valkenburgh 2010). In most of the cases only provide descriptive interpretation (Borrero 2009) Because of these limitations, an additional proxy for megafauna is necessary that is common, tightly associated with megafaunal presence, and can be found in temporally intact paleoecological archives (Bakker et al 2015)
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