Defaunation in the Anthropocene

2014/07/24 by Rodolfo Dirzo, Hillary S. Young, Mauro Galetti +3 · 27 citations
Environmental Science · #Species Distribution and Climate Change #Ecosystem dynamics and resilience #Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies

paper · doi:10.1126/science.1251817

openalex publication_date 2014/07/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

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.

Citations

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Cited by

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• The interaction of human population, food production, and biodiversity protection
• The impact of hunting on tropical mammal and bird populations
• Body size downgrading of mammals over the late Quaternary
• Ecological selectivity of the emerging mass extinction in the oceans
• Circling the drain: the extinction crisis and the future of humanity
• The homogenization of avian morphological and phylogenetic diversity under the global extinction crisis
• Are we eating the world's megafauna to extinction?
• Beyond words: From jaguar population trends to conservation and public policy in Mexico
• Lion ( Panthera leo ) populations are declining rapidly across Africa, except in intensively managed areas
• Street lighting has detrimental impacts on local insect populations
• Light pollution is a driver of insect declines
• Behavioural plasticity is associated with reduced extinction risk in birds
• Hallazgos en la Alcazaba de Málaga
• Understanding the Anthropocene through the lens of landfill microbiomes
• Global change synergies and trade‐offs between renewable energy and biodiversity
• Late quaternary biotic homogenization of North American mammalian faunas
• Collapse of terrestrial mammal food webs since the Late Pleistocene
• Late Pleistocene megafauna extinction leads to missing pieces of ecological space in a North American mammal community
• Full Mitogenomes in the Critically Endangered Kākāpō Reveal Major Post-Glacial and Anthropogenic Effects on Neutral Genetic Diversity
• Collapse of the mammoth-steppe in central Yukon as revealed by ancient environmental DNA
• Anthropocene [wikipedia]
• Holocene [wikipedia]
• Holocene extinction [wikipedia]
• Human impact on the environment [wikipedia]
• Mammal [wikipedia]
• Resource depletion [wikipedia]