“History would be an excellent thing if only it were true” ( Tolstoy )

1. “History would be an excellent thing if only it were true” (Tolstoy)

2. Sources of Historical Information

3. Types of Historical Information Readily available for many species • Distributional data (species occurrences) Potentially available/can be estimated Life history parameters (age, growth rates) Abundances of individual species Estimates of population sizes

4. Nature of historical data Sampling is generally biased Preservational and/or collecting biases Uneven spatial and/or temporal coverage Archeological & fossil data are time- averaged

5. Comparing past with present We cannot change how the past was sampled but we can modify how we sample the present Unbiased ecological surveys may not be appropriate! Time-averaging can be our friend since it damps out short term variation - pay attention to the recently dead (e.g. Kidwell, 2001) Developing a toolbox: much room for exploring new statistical approaches and modeling

6. http://www.biology.ucsd.edu/labs/roy/CBRISC/ Funding: UC Marine Council, The San Diego Foundation, NSF

8. Human Impacts on Body Size of intertidal invertebrates

9. Roy et al (2003) Ecology Letters 6:205-211

10. 3 . 3 2 3 . 2 8 3 . 2 4 3 . 2 3 . 1 6 CNM Tegula aureotincta The animals are cooked in oil and Served in the shell, the bodies removed with a pin as they are eaten……..Certainly a long-lived species such as Tegula cannot withstand an intensive fishery Ricketts et al. Between Pacific Tides ln(Length) Field Pre-1960 1960-1980 Roy et al (2003) Ecology Letters 6:205-211

11. Field Pleist Pre-1960 CNM 1960-1980 Fissurella volcano Not known to be harvested 3.21 3.16 ln(Length) 3.11 3.06 Roy et al (2003) Ecology Letters 6:205-211

12. Pre-1960 Why we need historical data Lottia gigantea (> 50 mm) 63 62 “When properly prepared it is delicious, having finer meat and more delicate flavor than abalone…….” Ricketts et al, Between Pacific Tides 61 Mean size 60 59 58 57 56 55 54 Protected (multi-year survey) Unprotected (multi-year survey) Survey data courtesy J.M. Engle & B.J. Becker

15. Newport Bay Bivalves (~ 125 k.b.p) No. of species No. of specimens Pleistocene/Holocene fossil record can provide pre-human baselines for distributions and relative abundance record can be extraordinarily complete e.g. ~ 80% of shallow marine mollusks living in California are in the Pleistocene terraces

16. Museum collections Can be used to: quantify past occurrences of species and identify local extinctions study temporal changes in population size structures as well as some aspects of life history This example from the UC Berkeley collections records the presence of the owl limpet at moonstone beach on Santa Catalina Island in 1949. Is the species still there?

17. Research papers, reports, dissertations etc. Can supplement museum data Often only source for some species or in countries without extensive museum archives The sacred chank of India (T. pyrum) Fishery extends back to ~ 2500 B.C. 1910-1911 harvest data from Hornell 1914 80000 60000 No. of individuals 40000 20000 0 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10 10.5 Diameter (cm)

18. N Northeastern Pacific Bivalves o 4 0 Present range limit of Southern extralimital species All of these species present 125,000 y.b.p. o 3 4 . 5 6 2 1 o 2 8 1 2 1 5 1 o 2 3 3 Species range limits shift in response climate change >26% of bivalve species known from the Pleistocene exhibit range shifts “Natural” local extinctions need to be separated from those due to human impacts