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East Africa is a global biodiversity hotspot and exhibits distinct longitudinal diversity gradients from west to east in freshwater fishes and forest mammals. The assembly of this exceptional biodiversity and the drivers behind diversity gradients remain poorly understood, with diversification often studied at local scales and less attention paid to biotic exchange between Afrotropical regions. Here, we reconstruct a river system that existed for several millennia along the now semiarid Kenya Rift Valley during the humid early Holocene and show how this river system influenced postglacial dispersal of fishes and mammals due to its dual role as a dispersal corridor and barrier. Using geomorphological, geochronological, isotopic, and fossil analyses and a synthesis of radiocarbon dates, we find that the overflow of Kenyan rift lakes between 12 and 8 ka before present formed a bidirectional river system consisting of a "Northern River" connected to the Nile Basin and a "Southern River," a closed basin. The drainage divide between these rivers represented the only viable terrestrial dispersal corridor across the rift. The degree and duration of past hydrological connectivity between adjacent river basins determined spatial diversity gradients for East African fishes. Our reconstruction explains the isolated distribution of Nilotic fish species in modern Kenyan rift lakes, Guineo-Congolian mammal species in forests east of the Kenya Rift, and recent incipient vertebrate speciation and local endemism in this region. Climate-driven rearrangements of drainage networks unrelated to tectonic activity contributed significantly to the assembly of species diversity and modern faunas in the East African biodiversity hotspot.

Understanding the climatic drivers of environmental variability (EV) during the Plio-Pleistocene and EV’s influence on mammalian macroevolution are two outstanding foci of research in African paleoclimatology and evolutionary biology. The potential effects of EV are especially relevant for testing the variability selection hypothesis, which predicts a positive relationship between EV and speciation and extinction rates in fossil mammals. Addressing these questions is stymied, however, by 1) a lack of multiple comparable EV records of sufficient temporal resolution and duration, and 2) the incompleteness of the mammalian fossil record. Here, we first compile a composite history of Pan-African EV spanning the Plio-Pleistocene, which allows us to explore which climatic variables influenced EV. We find that EV exhibits 1) a long-term trend of increasing variability since ∼3.7 Ma, coincident with rising variability in global ice volume and sea surface temperatures around Africa, and 2) a 400-ky frequency correlated with seasonal insolation variability. We then estimate speciation and extinction rates for fossil mammals from eastern Africa using a method that accounts for sampling variation. We find no statistically significant relationship between EV and estimated speciation or extinction rates across multiple spatial scales. These findings are inconsistent with the variability selection hypothesis as applied to macroevolutionary processes.

East African ecosystems have been shaped by long-term socio-ecological-environmental interactions. Although much previous work on human-environment interrelationships have emphasised the negative impacts of human interventions, a growing body of work shows that there have also often been strong beneficial connections between people and ecosystems, especially in savanna environments. However, limited information and understanding of past interactions between humans and ecosystems of periods longer than a century hampers effective management of contemporary environments. Here, we present a late Holocene study of pollen, fern spore, fungal spore, and charcoal analyses from radiocarbon-dated sediment sequences and assess this record against archaeological and historical data to describe socio-ecological changes on the Laikipia Plateau in Rift Valley Province, Kenya. The results suggest a landscape characterised by closed forests between 2268 years before present (cal year BP) and 1615 cal year BP when there was a significant change to a more open woodland/grassland mosaic that continues to prevail across the study area. Increased amounts of charcoal in the sediment are observed for this same period, becoming particularly common from around 900 cal year BP associated with fungal spores commonly linked to the presence of herbivores. It is likely these trends reflect changes in land use management as pastoral populations improved and extended pasture, using fire to eradicate disease-prone habitats. Implications for contemporary land use management are discussed in the light of these findings., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Although climate change is considered to have been a large-scale driver of African human evolution, landscape-scale shifts in ecological resources that may have shaped novel hominin adaptations are rarely investigated. We use well-dated, high-resolution, drill-core datasets to understand ecological dynamics associated with a major adaptive transition in the archeological record ~24 km from the coring site. Outcrops preserve evidence of the replacement of Acheulean by Middle Stone Age (MSA) technological, cognitive, and social innovations between 500 and 300 thousand years (ka) ago, contemporaneous with large-scale taxonomic and adaptive turnover in mammal herbivores. Beginning ~400 ka ago, tectonic, hydrological, and ecological changes combined to disrupt a relatively stable resource base, prompting fluctuations of increasing magnitude in freshwater availability, grassland communities, and woody plant cover. Interaction of these factors offers a resource-oriented hypothesis for the evolutionary success of MSA adaptations, which likely contributed to the ecological flexibility typical of Homo sapiens foragers., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).)

The semi-arid Amboseli landscape, southern Kenya, is characterised by intermittent groundwater-fed wetlands that form sedimentary geoarchives recording past ecosystem changes. We present a 5000-year environmental history of a radiocarbon dated sediment core from Esambu Swamp adjacent to Amboseli National Park. Although radiocarbon dates suggest an unconformity or sedimentary gap that spans between 3800 and 500 cal year BP, the record provides a unique insight into the long-term ecosystem history and wetland processes, particularly the past 500 years. Climatic shifts, fire activity and recent anthropogenic activity drive changes in ecosystem composition. Prior to 3800 cal year BP the pollen data suggest semi-arid savanna ecosystem persisted near the wetland. The wetland transgressed at some time between 3800 and 500 cal year BP and it is difficult to constrain this timing further, and palustrine peaty sediments have accumulated since 400 cal year BP. Increased abundance of Afromontane forest taxa from adjacent highlands of Kilimanjaro and the Chyulu Hills and local arboreal taxa reflect changes in regional moisture budgets. Particularly transformative changes occurred in the last five centuries, associated with increased local biomass burning coeval with the arrival of Maa-speaking pastoralists and intensification of the ivory trade. Cereal crops occurred consistently from around 300 cal year BP, indicative of further anthropogenic activity. The study provides unique insight in Amboseli ecosystem history and the link between ecosystem drivers of change. Such long-term perspectives are crucial for future climate change and associated livelihood impacts, so that suitable responses to ensure sustainable management practices can be developed in an important conservation landscape.