Potential millennial‐scale avian declines by humans in southern China

• Published in: Global change biology 2022-09, Vol.28 (18), p.5505-5513
• Main Authors: Dong, Feng, Zhang, Qiang, Chen, Yi‐Lin, Lei, Fu‐Min, Li, Shou‐Hsien, Wu, Fei, Yang, Xiao‐Jun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Archaeology; avifaunal decline; Biodiversity; Climate change; demographic history; Demographics; Demography; Ecological distribution; ecological niche models; Ecological niches; Genomes; Genomic analysis; Holocene; human disturbance; Human impact; Human influences; Human performance; Niches; Population (statistical); Population decline; population genomics; Population number; Population statistics; Questions; Statistical analysis; Statistical methods; Wildlife
• ISSN: 1354-1013; 1365-2486
• DOI: 10.1111/gcb.16289

Mounting observational records demonstrate human‐caused faunal decline in recent decades, while accumulating archaeological evidence suggests an early biodiversity impact of human activities during the Holocene. A fundamental question arises concerning whether modern wildlife population declines began during early human disturbance. Here, we performed a population genomic analysis of six common forest birds in East Asia to address this question. For five of them, demographic history inference based on 25–33 genomes of each species revealed dramatic population declines by 4‐ to 48‐fold over millennia (e.g. 2000–5000 thousand years ago). Nevertheless, summary statistics detected nonsignificant correlations between these population size trajectories and Holocene temperature variations, and ecological niche models explicitly predicted extensive range persistence during the Holocene, implying limited demographic consequence of Holocene climate change. Further analyses suggest high negative correlations between the reconstructed population declines and human disturbance intensities and indicate a potential driver of human activities. These findings provide a deep‐time and large‐scale insight into the recently recognized avifaunal decline and support an early origin hypothesis of human effects on biodiversity. Overall, our study sheds light on the current biodiversity crisis in the context of long‐term human–environment interactions and offers a multi‐evidential framework for quantitatively assessing the ecological consequences of human disturbance. In the present study, we combined population genomic, climatic and anthropogenic analyses on six common forest birds in East Asia to examine their historical demographics and underlying drivers. We revealed dramatic population declines by 4‐48‐fold over millennia (e.g., 2000–5000 thousand years ago) for most of them and highlighted a potential driver of human disturbance. Our findings provide a deep‐time and large‐scale insight into the recently recognized avifaunal decline and shed light on the current biodiversity crisis in the context of long‐term human‐environment interactions.