The past and future human impact on mammalian diversity
- Andermann, Tobias Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden. - Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Göteborg, Sweden.
- Faurby, Søren Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden. - Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Göteborg, Sweden.
- Turvey, Samuel T. Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, London, UK.
- Antonelli, Alexandre Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden. - Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Göteborg, Sweden. - Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, UK.
- Silvestro, Daniele Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden. - Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Göteborg, Sweden. - Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
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16.07.2020
Published in:
- Science Advances. - 2020, vol. 6, no. 36, p. eabb2313
English
To understand the current biodiversity crisis, it is crucial to determine how humans have affected biodiversity in the past. However, the extent of human involvement in species extinctions from the Late Pleistocene onward remains contentious. Here, we apply Bayesian models to the fossil record to estimate how mammalian extinction rates have changed over the past 126,000 years, inferring specific times of rate increases. We specifically test the hypothesis of human-caused extinctions by using posterior predictive methods. We find that human population size is able to predict past extinctions with 96% accuracy. Predictors based on past climate, in contrast, perform no better than expected by chance, suggesting that climate had a negligible impact on global mammal extinctions. Based on current trends, we predict for the near future a rate escalation of unprecedented magnitude. Our results provide a comprehensive assessment of the human impact on past and predicted future extinctions of mammals.
- Faculty
- Faculté des sciences et de médecine
- Department
- Département de Biologie
- Language
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- English
- Classification
- Biological sciences
- License
- License undefined
- Identifiers
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- RERO DOC 329618
- DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abb2313
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/309085
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