The changing role of mammal life histories in Late Quaternary extinction vulnerability on continents and islands.
Biol Lett
; 12(6)2016 06.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-27330176
ABSTRACT
Understanding extinction drivers in a human-dominated world is necessary to preserve biodiversity. We provide an overview of Quaternary extinctions and compare mammalian extinction events on continents and islands after human arrival in system-specific prehistoric and historic contexts. We highlight the role of body size and life-history traits in these extinctions. We find a significant size-bias except for extinctions on small islands in historic times. Using phylogenetic regression and classification trees, we find that while life-history traits are poor predictors of historic extinctions, those associated with difficulty in responding quickly to perturbations, such as small litter size, are good predictors of prehistoric extinctions. Our results are consistent with the idea that prehistoric and historic extinctions form a single continuing event with the same likely primary driver, humans, but the diversity of impacts and affected faunas is much greater in historic extinctions.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Extinção Biológica
/
Mamíferos
Tipo de estudo:
Prognostic_studies
Limite:
Animals
/
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Biol Lett
Assunto da revista:
BIOLOGIA
Ano de publicação:
2016
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Estados Unidos