The Roles of Human Hunter-Gatherers in North Pacific Food Webs

Ecological network analysis and modeling provide new tools for studying how humans, through their interactions with other species, fit into and impact the persistence of ecosystems. This talk will discuss the trophic roles of Aleut over the last 5000 years in North Pacific near-shore marine and intertidal habitats, based on analyses of empirical food web network structure and idealized bioenergetic dynamical modeling. The food web data, which combine ecological, archaeological, and ethnographic sources, are highly resolved with hundreds of species and thousands of feeding links identified.  Such high-quality data allow detailed assessment of the ways in which human hunter-gatherers are similar to or differ from non-human predators, and how effects from their primary feeding interactions can spread throughout ecosystems.  The importance of prey-switching for ecosystem stability and implications for sustainability of modern fisheries are considered.