Syracuse Sun

Packrats, also known as woodrats, are known for collecting materials from their environment to construct nests called middens. In deserts throughout western North America, packrat middens can preserve plants, insects, bones, and other specimens for more than 50,000 years. These natural time capsules provide scientists with valuable snapshots into the past.

Assistant Professor of Biology Katie Becklin from Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences highlights that ancient rodent middens have enabled scientists to reconstruct the ecology and climate of semi-arid ecosystems across various continents. “New technology in DNA and chemical analysis also allows us to get more information from smaller and smaller amounts of materials,” says Becklin. She notes that these advancements help predict which species might thrive under future climate conditions.

The importance of preserving these archives is underscored in a prospectus paper recently published online in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. The paper resulted from a multi-year collaboration involving researchers from ten institutions across the United States, France, and Chile. Co-author Francisca Diaz contributed by sampling middens in South America's Atacama Desert.

However, many midden collections are at risk as they are stored at individual institutions where they could be lost or discarded upon researchers' retirements. Additionally, midden fossils in the wild face threats from human development and ongoing climate change.

To address these issues, the authors recommend establishing regional depositories for midden materials to ensure long-term access for researchers. They also call for new collections to counteract losses due to land-use conversion, mineral resource extraction, increased wildfire frequency, and climate change.

“This is an invitation to the next generation of scientists to take advantage of these resources,” says Becklin. “We need to protect these records and make them accessible to the global scientific community.”

This story was written by John H. Tibbetts