Journal of Mammalogy

Published by: American Society of Mammalogists

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Journal of Mammalogy 88(6):1363-1380. 2007
doi: 10.1644/06-MAMM-A-124R2.1

PERSISTENCE OF LARGE MAMMAL FAUNAS AS INDICATORS OF GLOBAL HUMAN IMPACTS

John C. Morrison*a, Wes Sechrestb, Eric Dinersteina, David S. Wilcoved, and John F. Lamoreuxce

aWorld Wildlife Fund—US, 1250 24th Street NW, Washington, DC 20037, USA (JCM, ED)

bDepartment of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA (WS)

cIUCN/SSC–CI/CABS Biodiversity Assessment Unit, Conservation International, 2011 Crystal Drive, Suite 500, Arlington, VA 22202, USA (JFL)

dWoodrow Wilson School and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA (DSW)

eDepartment of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, 210 Nagle Hall, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA (JFL)

101*Correspondent:

Abstract

Large mammals often play critical roles within ecosystems by affecting either prey populations or the structure and species composition of surrounding vegetation. However, large mammals are highly vulnerable to extirpation by humans and consequently, severe contractions of species ranges result in intact large mammal faunas becoming increasingly rare. We compared historical (AD 1500) range maps of large mammals with their current distributions to determine which areas today retain complete assemblages of large mammals. We estimate that less than 21% of the earth's terrestrial surface still contains all of the large (>20 kg) mammals it once held, with the proportion varying between 68% in Australasia to only 1% in Indomalaya. Although the presence of large mammals offers no guarantee of the presence of all smaller animals, their absence represents an ecologically based measurement of human impacts on biodiversity. Given the ecological importance of large mammals and their vulnerability to extinction, better protection and extension of sites containing complete assemblages of large mammals is urgently needed.

submittedApril 21, 2006; Accepted: March 19, 2007

Keywords: global, historic range, human impact, large mammals, range contraction



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Appendix


table

Appendix I The large mammal species with body mass >20 kg.

table

Appendix II The species present in the intact large mammal assemblages.

Fig. 1.—Intact large mammal faunas. Colored portions of the map indicate the number of species each intact large mammal area contains. Warm colors denote species-rich sites, whereas cool colors are less rich. The pink areas possessed large mammals in AD 1500 but no longer contained all of their former species. Gray areas did not posses large mammals historically (Antarctica would be gray but is not depicted). Note that the areas with highest mammal richness (East Africa and Indomalaya) have some of the lowest coverage of intact mammal faunas. Map numbers refer to Table 1 (AAxx = Australasia; ATxx = Afrotropics; IMxx = Indomalaya; NAxx = Nearctic; NTxx = Neotropics; PAxx = Palearctic).

table

Table 1.—Intact large mammal faunas, based on current and historical (circa AD 1500) range maps.

table

Table 2.—Areas (km2) of historic and present large mammal faunas by biogeographic realm. NA = not applicable.

table

Table 3.—The 20 species of large mammals with greatest documented area of absolute range contraction since AD 1500.

Associate Editor was Roger A. Powell

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