Using the past to contextualize anthropogenic impacts on the present and future distribution of an endemic Caribbean mammal

Island species are difficult to conserve because they face the synergy of climate change, invasive species, deforestation, and increasing human population densities in areas where land mass is shrinking. The Caribbean island of Hispaniola presents particular challenges because of geopolitical complexities that span 2 countries and hinder coordinated management of species across the island. We employed species distribution modeling to evaluate the impacts of climatic change and anthropogenic activities on the distribution of an endemic mammal of conservation concern, the Hispaniolan solenodon (Solenodon paradoxus). We aggregated occurrence points for this poorly known species for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and the present (1975–2016) based on museum collections, online biodiversity databases, and new field surveys. We quantified degree of overlap between periods and scenarios with Schoener's D. Through a conservation paleobiology lens, we found that over time humans played an increasing role in shaping the distribution of S. paradoxus, thus, providing a foundation for developing conservation strategies on appropriate spatiotemporal scales. Human population density was the single most important predictor of S. paradoxus occurrence. Densities >166 people/km² corresponded to a near-zero probability of occurrence. Models that accounted for climate but not anthropogenic variables falsely identified suitable habitat in Haiti, where on-the-ground surveys confirm habitat is unavailable. Climate-only models also significantly overestimated the potential for habitat connectivity between isolated populations. Our work highlights that alternative fates for S. paradoxus in the Anthropocene exist across the political border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti due to the fundamentally different economic and political realities of each country. Relationships in the fossil record confirm that Hispaniola's sociopolitical boundary is not biologically significant but instead represents one imposed on the island's fauna in the past 500 years by colonial activity. Our approach reveals how a paleontological perspective can contribute to concrete management insights.     

Eliding Extraction,Embracing Novelty: The Spatio-Temporal Configuration of Natural History

Natural history museums present fertile ground for considering material configurations of “nature” and “history.” This essay analyzes the Natural History Museum of Utah at Rio Tinto Center (NHMU) to explore how spatio-temporal configurations of nature and history may paradoxically elide the deep time of natural history. Primarily considering its naming and its spatial placement rather than the impressive collections it houses, I identify spatio-temporal distortions related to three elements of the NHMU: its naming after a multinational mining company, its architectural attempt to represent iconic landforms, and its imposition on a heretofore-undeveloped parcel of land. Taking these distortions in sum, I argue that the museum, which is meant by its architects to be in harmony with the land, elides rather than harmonizes with the land that produced its collections by replacing ancientness with novelty and by conjoining extraction and education. This elision, performed by a building purported to embody the full depth of time, may flatten the deep time of the geologic past, thereby abetting the concealment of the ever-expanding extraction.