The ghosts of mammals past: biological and geographical patterns of global mammalian extinction across the Holocene

Although the recent historical period is usually treated as a temporal base-line for understanding patterns of mammal extinction, mammalian biodiversity loss has also taken place throughout the Late Quaternary. We explore the spatial, taxonomic and phylogenetic patterns of 241 mammal species extinct...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences 2011-09, Vol.366 (1577), p.2564-2576
Main Authors: Turvey, Samuel T., Fritz, Susanne A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biological Evolution
Biological taxonomies
Body Mass
Body Weight
Demography
Ecosystem
Extinct species
Extinction Filter
Extinction, Biological
Fauna
Fossil Record
Fossils
Humans
Late Quaternary
Mammals
Mammals - genetics
Mass extinction events
Models, Biological
Phylogenetics
Risk
Species extinction
Supertree
Threat
Threatened species
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Summary:Although the recent historical period is usually treated as a temporal base-line for understanding patterns of mammal extinction, mammalian biodiversity loss has also taken place throughout the Late Quaternary. We explore the spatial, taxonomic and phylogenetic patterns of 241 mammal species extinctions known to have occurred during the Holocene up to the present day. To assess whether our understanding of mammalian threat processes has been affected by excluding these taxa, we incorporate extinct species data into analyses of the impact of body mass on extinction risk. We find that Holocene extinctions have been phylogenetically and spatially concentrated in specific taxa and geographical regions, which are often not congruent with those disproportionately at risk today. Large-bodied mammals have also been more extinction-prone in most geographical regions across the Holocene. Our data support the extinction filter hypothesis, whereby regional faunas from which susceptible species have already become extinct now appear less threatened; they may also suggest that different processes are responsible for driving past and present extinctions. We also find overall incompleteness and inter-regional biases in extinction data from the recent fossil record. Although direct use of fossil data in future projections of extinction risk is therefore not straightforward, insights into extinction processes from the Holocene record are still useful in understanding mammalian threat.
ISSN:0962-8436
1471-2970
DOI:10.1098/rstb.2011.0020