Island ecosystem ecology from deep prehistory to the Anthropocene

Humans are fragmenting ecosystems into habitat 'islands', causing an unprecedented global collapse of large mammal populations just as science is discovering their essential ecological roles.

The impact of these losses is such that our understanding of the contemporary biosphere is clearly shaped by a world artificially depleted of terrestrial giants. However, the causes of megafaunal extinctions over a much deeper, >50,000-year timeframe remain strongly contested.

How did specific anthropogenic and/or climate factors interact to transform and collapse megafaunal ecosystems and what implications did this have for human societies at different points in time?

The feedbacks and ecological legacies of these older extinctions have important lessons for the current biodiversity crisis, yet the dearth of good quality fossil and contextual data from many regions, settings and species has prevented robust appraisal.

ISLANDLAB will explore these questions using the Maltese Islands as a frame of reference for the effects of anthropogenic ecosystem fragmentation.

Pilot work has already uncovered an unprecedented deep-time record of pristine natural systems successively interrupted by waves of humans.

Direct interaction between humans and the endemic megafauna begins with a likely Neanderthal presence and ends with the first monumental civilizations, with exponential losses and subsequent faunal reintroductions lasting until the mid-Holocene.

By building high-resolution ecological, climatic, and archaeological characterisations of Malta before and after human arrival and subsequent alteration of biotas, ISLANDLAB will therefore document long-term legacies and feedbacks between ecological changes, societal responses, and ecosystem resilience.

More broadly, the results will shed light on extinction processes in current anthropogenic landscapes, elucidating the ecological and human dimensions of restoration pathways from an island paradigm at a pivot between Europe and Africa.