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The search for novel approaches to establishing ecological baselines (reference conditions) is constrained by the fact that most ecological studies span the past few decades, at most, and investigate ecosystems that have been substantially altered by human activities for decades, centuries, or more. Paleobiology, archeology, and history provide historical ecological context for biological conservation, remediation, and restoration. We argue that linking historical ecology explicitly with conservation can help unify related disciplines of conservation paleobiology, conservation archeobiology, and environmental history. Differences in the spatial and temporal resolution and extent (scale) of prehistoric, historic, and modern ecological data remain obstacles to integrating historical ecology and conservation biology, but the prolonged temporal extents of historical ecological data can help establish more complete baselines for restoration, document a historical range of ecological variability, and assist in determining desired future conditions. We used the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) fishery of the Chesapeake Bay (U.S.A.) to demonstrate the utility of historical ecological data for elucidating oyster conservation and the need for an approach to conservation that transcends disciplinary boundaries. Historical ecological studies from the Chesapeake have documented dramatic declines (as much as 99%) in oyster abundance since the early to mid-1800s, changes in oyster size in response to different nutrient levels from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, and substantial reductions in oyster accretion rates (from 10 mm/year to effectively 0 mm/year) from the Late Holocene to modern times. Better integration of different historical ecological data sets and increased collaboration between paleobiologists, geologists, archeologists, environmental historians, and ecologists to create standardized research designs and methodologies will help unify prehistoric, historic, and modern time perspectives on biological conservation. La búsqueda de métodos nuevos para establecer líneas de base ecológicas (condiciones de referencia) está limitada por el hecho de que la mayoría de los estudios ecológicos abarcan las últimas décadas, cuando mucho, e investigan ecosistemas que han sido alterados sustancialmente por actividades humanas, por décadas, siglos o, posiblemente, más. La paleobiología, arqueología e historia proporcionan contexto ecológico histórico a la biología de la conservación, la remediación y restauración. Argumentamos que la integración explícita de la ecología histórica con la conservación puede ayudar a unificar disciplinas relacionadas de paleobiología de la conservación, arqueobiología de la conservación e historia ambiental. Diferencias en la resolución espacial y temporal y la extensión (escala) de datos prehistóricos, históricos y modernos aun son obstáculos para la integración de la ecología histórica y la biología de la conservación, pero las extensiones temporales prolongadas de datos ecológicos históricos pueden ayudar a establecer líneas de base más completas para la restauración, documentar un rango histórico de variabilidad ecológica y ayudar a la determinación de condiciones futuras deseadas. Utilizamos la pesquería del ostión oriental (Crassostrea virginica) de la Bahía de Chesapeake (E.U.A.) para demostrar la utilidad de los datos ecológicos históricos para dilucidar la conservación del ostión y la necesidad de un método de conservación que trascienda límites disciplinares. Los estudios ecológicos históricos de Chesapeake han documentado declinaciones dramáticas (tanto como 99%) en la abundancia de ostiones de inicios a mediados de los 1800, cambios en el tamaño de ostiones en respuesta a diferentes niveles de nutrientes del siglo dieciséis al diecinueve y reducciones sustanciales en las tasas de acreción de ostiones (de 10 mm/año a 0 mm/año) desde el Holoceno Tardío a tiempos modernos. Una mejor integración de diferentes conjuntos de datos ecológicos históricos y una mayor colaboración entre paleobiólogos, geólogos, arqueólogos, historiadores ambientales y ecólogos para definir diseños de investigación estandarizados y metodologías ayudarán a unificar perspectivas de la biología de la conservación prehistóricas, históricas y modernas.

Archaeological and paleoecological evidence shows that by 10,000 BCE, all human societies employed varying degrees of ecologically transformative land use practices, including burning, hunting, species propagation, domestication, cultivation, and others that have left long-term legacies across the terrestrial biosphere. Yet, a lingering paradigm among natural scientists, conservationists, and policymakers is that human transformation of terrestrial nature is mostly recent and inherently destructive. Here, we use the most up-to-date, spatially explicit global reconstruction of historical human populations and land use to show that this paradigm is likely wrong. Even 12,000 y ago, nearly three quarters of Earth’s landwas inhabited and therefore shaped by human societies, including more than 95% of temperate and 90% of tropical woodlands. Lands now characterized as “natural,” “intact,” and “wild” generally exhibit long histories of use, as do protected areas and Indigenous lands, and current global patterns of vertebrate species richness and key biodiversity areas are more strongly associated with past patterns of land use than with present ones in regional landscapes now characterized as natural. The current biodiversity crisis can seldom be explained by the loss of uninhabited wildlands, resulting instead from the appropriation, colonization, and intensifying use of the biodiverse cultural landscapes long shaped and sustained by prior societies. Recognizing this deep cultural connection with biodiversity will therefore be essential to resolve the crisis.

The first humans to reach the Americas are likely to have come via a coastal route For much of the 20th century, most archaeologists believed humans first colonized the Americas ∼13,500 years ago via an overland route that crossed Beringia and followed a long and narrow, mostly ice-free corridor to the vast plains of central North America. There, Clovis people and their descendants hunted large game and spread rapidly through the New World. Twentieth-century discoveries of distinctive Clovis artifacts throughout North America, some associated with mammoth or mastodon kill sites, supported this “Clovis-first” model. North America's coastlines and their rich marine, estuarine, riverine, and terrestrial ecosystems were peripheral to the story of how and when the Americas were first settled by humans. Recent work along the Pacific coastlines of North and South America has revealed that these environments were settled early and continuously provided a rich diversity of subsistence options and technological resources for New World hunter-gatherers.

Historical ecology has revolutionized our understanding of fisheries and cultural landscapes, demonstrating the value of historical data for evaluating the past, present, and future of Earth’s ecosystems. Despite several important studies, Indigenous fisheries generally receive less attention from scholars and managers than the 17th–20th century capitalist commercial fisheries that decimated many keystone species, including oysters. We investigate Indigenous oyster harvest through time in North America and Australia, placing these data in the context of sea level histories and historical catch records. Indigenous oyster fisheries were pervasive across space and through time, persisting for 5000–10,000 years or more. Oysters were likely managed and sometimes “farmed,” and are woven into broader cultural, ritual, and social traditions. Effective stewardship of oyster reefs and other marine fisheries around the world must center Indigenous histories and include Indigenous community members to co-develop more inclusive, just, and successful strategies for restoration, harvest, and management. ‘Commercial fisheries have decimated keystone species, including oysters in the past 200 years. Here, the authors examine how Indigenous oyster harvest in North America and Australia was managed across 10,000 years, advocating for effective future stewardship of oyster reefs by centering Indigenous peoples.’

During the last 10 years, we have learned a great deal about the potential for a coastal peopling of the Americas and the importance of marine resources in early economies. Despite research at a growing number of terminal Pleistocene archaeological sites on the Pacific Coast of the Americas, however, important questions remain about the lifeways of early Paleocoastal peoples. Research at CA-SRI-26, a roughly 11,700 year old site on California's Santa Rosa Island, provides new data on Paleoindian technologies, subsistence strategies, and seasonality in an insular maritime setting. Buried beneath approximately two meters of alluvium, much of the site has been lost to erosion, but its remnants have produced chipped stone artifacts (crescents and Channel Island Amol and Channel Island Barbed points) diagnostic of early island Paleocoastal components. The bones of waterfowl and seabirds, fish, and marine mammals, along with small amounts of shellfish document a diverse subsistence strategy. These data support a relatively brief occupation during the wetter \"winter\" season (late fall to early spring), in an upland location several km from the open coast. When placed in the context of other Paleocoastal sites on the Channel Islands, CA-SRI-26 demonstrates diverse maritime subsistence strategies and a mix of seasonal and more sustained year-round island occupations. Our results add to knowledge about a distinctive island Paleocoastal culture that appears to be related to Western Stemmed Tradition sites widely scattered across western North America.

Three archaeological sites on California's Channel Islands show that Paleoindians relied heavily on marine resources. The Paleocoastal sites, dated between approximately 12,200 and 11,200 years ago, contain numerous stemmed projectile points and crescents associated with a variety of marine and aquatic faunal remains. At site CA-SRI-512 on Santa Rosa Island, Paleocoastal peoples used such tools to capture geese, cormorants, and other birds, along with marine mammals and finfish. At Cardwell Bluffs on San Miguel Island, Paleocoastal peoples collected local chert cobbles, worked them into bifaces and projectile points, and discarded thousands of marine shells. With bifacial technologies similar to those seen in Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition assemblages of western North America, the sites provide evidence for seafaring and island colonization by Paleoindians with a diversified maritime economy.

Forty years ago, Knut Fladmark (1979) argued that the Pacific Coast offered a viable alternative to the ice-free corridor model for the initial peopling of the Americas—one of the first to support a “coastal migration theory” that remained marginal for decades. Today, the pre-Clovis occupation at the Monte Verde site is widely accepted, several other pre-Clovis sites are well documented, investigations of terminal Pleistocene subaerial and submerged Pacific Coast landscapes have increased, and multiple lines of evidence are helping decode the nature of early human dispersals into the Americas. Misconceptions remain, however, about the state of knowledge, productivity, and deglaciation chronology of Pleistocene coastlines and possible technological connections around the Pacific Rim. We review current evidence for several significant clusters of early Pacific Coast archaeological sites in North and South America that include sites as old or older than Clovis. We argue that stemmed points, foliate points, and crescents (lunates) found around the Pacific Rim may corroborate genomic studies that support an early Pacific Coast dispersal route into the Americas. Still, much remains to be learned about the Pleistocene colonization of the Americas, and multiple working hypotheses are warranted. Hace cuarenta años, Knut Fladmark (1979) argumentó que la costa del Oceano Pacífico ofrecía una alternativa viable a la ruta de Corredor sin Hielo para la población inicial de las Américas. El era una de las primeras en apoyar una “teoría de la migración costera,” lo que permaneció marginal durante décadas. Hoy en día, la ocupación pre-Clovis en el sitio de Monte Verde es ampliamente aceptada, varios otros sitios pre-Clovis están bien documentados, las investigaciones de los sitios terrestres del Pleistoceno terminal y los paisajes sumergidos de la costa del Pacífico han aumentado, y múltiples líneas de evidencia están ayudando a descifrar los patrones de dispersion humana temprana en las Américas. Sin embargo, siguen existiendo conceptos erróneos sobre el estado del conocimiento, la productividad y la cronología de la deglaciación de las líneas costeras del Pleistoceno y las posibles conexiones tecnológicas a lo largo del Pacífico. Revisamos la evidencia actual de varios agrupaciones importantes de sitios arqueológicos de la costa del Pacífico temprano en América del Norte y del Sur que incluyen yacimientos más antiguos o más antiguos que Clovis. Argumentamos que los puntos proyectiles de pedúnculo, puntos foliares y crecientes (lunados) encontrados cerca del borde del Pacífico pueden corroborar los estudios genómicos que respaldan una ruta temprana de dispersión por la costa del Pacífico a través de las Américas. Queda mucho por aprender acerca de la colonización del Pleistoceno en las Américas y se justifican múltiples hipótesis de trabajo.

Island endemics are typically differentiated from their mainland progenitors in behavior, morphology, and genetics, often resulting from long-term evolutionary change. To examine mechanisms for the origins of island endemism, we present a phylogeographic analysis of whole mitochondrial genomes from the endangered island fox (Urocyon littoralis), endemic to California's Channel Islands, and mainland gray foxes (U. cinereoargenteus). Previous genetic studies suggested that foxes first appeared on the islands >16,000 years ago, before human arrival (~13,000 cal BP), while archaeological and paleontological data supported a colonization >7000 cal BP. Our results are consistent with initial fox colonization of the northern islands probably by rafting or human introduction ~9200-7100 years ago, followed quickly by human translocation of foxes from the northern to southern Channel Islands. Mitogenomes indicate that island foxes are monophyletic and most closely related to gray foxes from northern California that likely experienced a Holocene climate-induced range shift. Our data document rapid morphological evolution of island foxes (in ~2000 years or less). Despite evidence for bottlenecks, island foxes have generated and maintained multiple mitochondrial haplotypes. This study highlights the intertwined evolutionary history of island foxes and humans, and illustrates a new approach for investigating the evolutionary histories of other island endemics.