Lyons S Kathleen, Miller Joshua H, Fraser Danielle, Smith Felisa A, Boyer Alison, Lindsey Emily, Mychajliw Alexis M
Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013-7012, USA
Department of Geology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA.
Biol Lett. 2016 Jun;12(6). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2016.0342.
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.
在人类主导的世界中，了解物种灭绝的驱动因素对于保护生物多样性至关重要。我们概述了第四纪灭绝事件，并在特定系统的史前和历史背景下，比较了人类到达后各大洲和岛屿上的哺乳动物灭绝事件。我们强调了体型和生活史特征在这些灭绝事件中的作用。我们发现，除了历史时期小岛屿上的灭绝事件外，存在显著的体型偏差。通过系统发育回归和分类树分析，我们发现，虽然生活史特征对历史时期的灭绝事件预测能力较差，但那些与难以快速应对干扰相关的特征，如产仔数少，却是史前灭绝事件的良好预测指标。我们的结果与以下观点一致，即史前和历史时期的灭绝构成了一个单一的持续事件，其主要驱动因素可能相同，都是人类，但历史时期灭绝事件的影响多样性和受影响的动物群要大得多。
