Insect Herbivores of Ferns along the Pacific Northwest Coast of North American

Fifteen species of insect herbivores were discovered on ferns growing along the Pacific northwest coast of North America. These included insects from the orders: Diptera in the families Anthomyiidae, Cecidiomyiidae and Syrphidae: Lepidoptera in the families Erebidae, Tortricidae and Noctuidae: Hymenoptera in the family Tenthredinidae: Hemiptera in the family Aphididae and Coleoptera in the family Curculionidae. The present study illustrates these associations that provides new world and North American host records of fern herbivores. The fossil record of these families is used to determine if the most ancient of these insects (dating from the Mesozoic) are now mostly restricted to ferns and the most recent ones (dating from the Cenozoic) are mostly polyphagous, feeding on ferns as well as various angiosperms. Results indicate that the insect clades belonging to the most ancient families, such as Aneugmenuss and Strongylogaster in the Tenthredinidae and Dasineura and Mycodiplosis in the Cecidiomyiidae, appear to be monophagous on ferns.

Archaeological and Contemporary Evidence Indicates Low Sea Otter Prevalence on the Pacific Northwest Coast During the Late Holocene

The historic extirpation and subsequent recovery of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) have profoundly changed coastal social-ecological systems across the northeastern Pacific. Today, the conservation status of sea otters is informed by estimates of population carrying capacity or growth rates independent of human impacts. However, archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggests that for millennia, complex hunting and management protocols by Indigenous communities limited sea otter abundance near human settlements to reduce the negative impacts of this keystone predator on shared shellfish prey. To assess relative sea otter prevalence in the Holocene, we compared the size structure of ancient California mussels (Mytilus californianus) from six archaeological sites in two regions on the Pacific Northwest Coast, to modern California mussels at locations with and without sea otters. We also quantified modern mussel size distributions from eight locations on the Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada, varying in sea otter occupation time. Comparisons of mussel size spectra revealed that ancient mussel size distributions are consistently more similar to modern size distributions at locations with a prolonged absence of sea otters. This indicates that late Holocene sea otters were maintained well below carrying capacity near human settlements as a result of human intervention. These findings illuminate the conditions under which sea otters and humans persisted over millennia prior to the Pacific maritime fur trade and raise important questions about contemporary conservation objectives for an iconic marine mammal and the social-ecological system in which it is embedded.

Referee statement on Technology as Human Social Tradition: 15 Trait-Based Datasets of Hunter-Gatherer Material Culture (Northwest Siberia, Pacific Northwest Coast, Northern California). Data Paper

The data provide significant opportunities for new investigations. The data are structured in such a way that each of Jordan's studies can be replicated spanning Khanty, Coast Salish, and various Indigenous Californian technological traditions.

Technology as Human Social Tradition: 15 Trait-Based Datasets of Hunter-Gatherer Material Culture (Northwest Siberia, Pacific Northwest Coast, Northern California). Data Paper

How are particular material culture traditions passed from one generation to the next? The digital archive supports "Technology as Human Social Tradition: Cultural Transmission among Hunter-Gatherers" (Jordan 2015) published by University of California Press. The archive consists of 15 Excel files which were used to conduct in-depth analysis of the factors driving diversity and change in material culture traditions. Each file contains a high-resolution survey of the design features of one material tradition practised by groups living in a geographic region. Three regions are investigated: Northwest Siberia (storage platforms shrines, skis); Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada (houses, canoes, basketry-matting); Northern California (basketry, houses, ceremonial dress).

Observations of extreme wave runup events on the U.S. Pacific Northwest coast

Extreme, tsunami-like wave runup events in the absence of earthquakes or landslides have been attributed to trapped waves over shallow bathymetry and long waves created by atmospheric disturbances. These runup events are associated with inland excursions of hundreds of meters and periods of minutes. While the theory of radiation stress implies that nearshore energy transfer from the carrier waves to the infragravity waves can also lead to very large runup, there have not been observations of runup events induced by this process with magnitudes and periods comparable to the other two mechanisms. This work presents observations of several runup events in the U.S. Pacific Northwest that are comparable to extreme runup events related to trapped waves and atmospheric disturbances. It also discusses possible generation mechanisms and shows that energy transfer from incident waves to bound infragravity waves is a plausible generation mechanism. In addition, a method to predict and forecast extreme runup events with similar characteristics is presented.

Ancient dog diets on the Pacific Northwest Coast: zooarchaeological and stable isotope modelling evidence from Tseshaht territory and beyond

Domestic dogs are frequently encountered in Indigenous archaeological sites on the Northwest Coast of North America. Although dogs depended on human communities for care and provisioning, archaeologists lack information about the specific foods dogs consumed. Previous research has used stable isotope analysis of dog diets for insight into human subsistence (‘canine surrogacy’ model) and identified considerable use of marine resources. Here, we use zooarchaeological data to develop and apply a Bayesian mixing model (MixSIAR) to estimate dietary composition from 14 domestic dogs and 13 potential prey taxa from four archaeological sites (2,900–300 BP) in Tseshaht First Nation territory on western Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Two candidate models that best match zooarchaeological data indicate dogs predominantly consumed salmon and forage fish (35–65%), followed by nearshore fish (4–40%), and marine mammals (2–30%). We compared these isotopic data to dogs across the Northwest Coast, which indicated a pronounced marine diet for Tseshaht dogs and, presumably, their human providers. These results are broadly consistent with the canine surrogacy model as well as help illuminate human participation in pre-industrial marine food webs and the long-term role of fisheries in Indigenous economies and lifeways.

From “taking” to “tending”: learning about Indigenous land and resource management on the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America

Indigenous peoples have occupied the northwestern North American coast for at least 15 000 years—a time when much of the land was covered by a kilometre or more of ice and only patches of land were glacier free. Over the millennia, through difficult times and seasons of plenty, they have built up an immense body of local knowledge, practice, and belief—Indigenous, or Traditional Ecological Knowledge—enabling them to live well, learning about the plants and animals of terrestrial, aquatic, and marine environments on which they have depended, and how to harvest and process them into nutritious foods, healing medicines, and useful materials. Although it has been commonly assumed that these people, as so-called “hunter-gatherers”, were simply helping themselves to nature’s provisions, over decades of learning from Indigenous plant specialists and other knowledge holders as an ethnobotanist, I have come to see First Peoples as resource tenders and managers over countless generations. Their traditional land and resource management systems provide many lessons on how we humans can work with natural processes to ensure the well-being not only of ourselves but also of the species and habitats on which we rely.

Toward a geography of foodways in the southern Gulf Islands, Pacific Northwest Coast

Fine-screen animal bone and Pacific salmon ancient DNA (aDNA) results from Northwest Coast shell midden sites, together with other kinds of material culture, can provide detailed information on foodways, site-specific activities, and sociality. Seasonal use of the landscape may also be revealed through an understanding of place in the southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia, Canada. New results from column sample faunal analysis at the Pender Canal site are considered in conjunction with previously identified fauna. Alongside site characteristics, zooarchaeological and aDNA species identification data are employed to help reconstruct activities that people undertook. These tasks and their social implications at Pender Canal are contextualized with a discussion of several similar data sets from contemporary sites in the region. Temporal patterns in small fish remains and ancient salmon DNA at Pender Canal correspond with region-wide changes in land use, helping us interpret the formation of Coast Salish social relationships and identities over millennia.