Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 345, Issue 6195, Pages 401-406Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1251817
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Funding
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico
- Fundacao para o Desenvolvimento do Unesp
- Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo
- NERC
- Joint Nature Conservation Committee
- Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
- NSF
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [1256034] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Natural Environment Research Council [ceh010010] Funding Source: researchfish
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We live amid a global wave of anthropogenically driven biodiversity loss: species and population extirpations and, critically, declines in local species abundance. Particularly, human impacts on animal biodiversity are an under-recognized form of global environmental change. Among terrestrial vertebrates, 322 species have become extinct since 1500, and populations of the remaining species show 25% average decline in abundance. Invertebrate patterns are equally dire: 67% of monitored populations show 45% mean abundance decline. Such animal declines will cascade onto ecosystem functioning and human well-being. Much remains unknown about this Anthropocene defaunation; these knowledge gaps hinder our capacity to predict and limit defaunation impacts. Clearly, however, defaunation is both a pervasive component of the planet's sixth mass extinction and also a major driver of global ecological change.
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