Reorganization of surviving mammal communities after the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction

Tóth, Anikó B.; Lyons, S. Kathleen; Barr, W. Andrew; Behrensmeyer, Anna K.; Blois, Jessica L.; Bobe, René; Davis, Matt; Du, Andrew; Eronen, Jussi T.; Faith, J. Tyler; Fraser, Danielle; Gotelli, Nicholas J.; Graves, Gary R.; Jukar, Advait M.; Miller, Joshua H.; Pineda‐Munoz, Silvia; Soul, Laura C.; Villaseñor, Amelia; Alroy, John

doi:10.1126/science.aaw1605

Cited by 38 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 54 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…These segregations could result either from range contraction or decreased occupancy. However, this is not borne out in previous analyses, which show increased occupancy and range sizes in the Holocene (Tóth et al 2019). On the other hand, the increase in segregations during the Holocene may result from the loss of biotic associations and enhanced importance of abiotic segregations such as habitat preferences during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition (Tóth et al 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…Formation of aggregated and segregated pairs among surviving mammals during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene appear to have been driven by the same ecological processes of environmental filtering and competition, respectively. Though range expansions and shifts were widespread among Holocene mammals (Lyons 2003, Tóth et al 2019), they did not lead to changes in the ecological rules governing species pair formation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Table 2 summarizes the results in Lyons et al (2016). Previous research (Lyons et al 2016, Tóth et al 2019 has shown that these types of co-occurrence analyses are robust to differences in collection mode, temporal grain, spatial or temporal extent, taphonomic bias, taxonomic resolution and sampling biases.…”

Section: Datasetmentioning

confidence: 96%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Body mass‐related changes in mammal community assembly patterns during the late Quaternary of North America

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The late Quaternary of North America was marked by prominent ecological changes, including the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction, the spread of human settlements and the rise of agriculture. Here we examine the mechanistic reasons for temporal changes in mammal species association and body size during this time period. Building upon the co-occurrence results from Lyons et al. (2016)-wherein each species pair was classified as spatially aggregated, segregated or random-we examined body mass differences (BMD) between each species pair for each association type and time period (Late Pleistocene: 40 000 14 C-11 700 14 C ybp, Holocene: 11 700 14 C-50 ybp and Modern: 50-0 yr). In the Late Pleistocene and Holocene, the BMD of both aggregated and segregated species pairs was significantly smaller than the BMD of random pairs. These results are consistent with environmental filtering and competition as important drivers of community structure in both time periods. Modern assemblages showed a breakdown between BMD and co-occurrence patterns: the average BMD of aggregated, segregated and random species pairs did not differ from each other. Collectively, these results indicate that the late Quaternary mammalian extinctions not only eliminated many large-bodied species but were followed by a reorganization of communities that altered patterns of species coexistence and associated differences in body size.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Body mass‐related changes in mammal community assembly patterns during the late Quaternary of North America

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Climate niche mismatch was not evident in our projections, neither were declines in local richness of seed dispersers. This may indicate lack of specialization, via low niche overlap and/or non-exclusive interactions (Tóth et al, 2019), between the Brazil nut tree and its seed dispersers. Although agoutis are considered the main dispersers of the Brazil nut tree (Wadt et al, 2018;Zuidema & Boot, 2002), other studies suggest a more active role of human-mediated dispersal and planting of trees (Scoles & Gribel, 2011, 2015.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change drives spatial mismatch and threatens the biotic interactions of the Brazil nut

Sales

Rodrigues

Masiero

2020

Global Ecol. Biogeogr.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aim Climate change and deforestation will redistribute biodiversity in the next century. Species‐specific differences in the response to these stressors will lead to distribution decoupling of interacting species. However, consequences for ecosystem services are poorly known. Here, we assess the potential effects of future distribution mismatch on a key ecosystem service mediated by seed dispersal and pollination interactions: the sustainable exploitation of Brazil nuts. Location The Amazon. Major taxa studied Woody plants, medium‐sized mammals, and insects. Time period Present day, end of the 21st century. Methods Combining ecological niche models to simulations of tree cover loss and dispersal constraints, we compare the forecasted distribution of the plant to that of its interacting fauna of pollinators and seed dispersers. Results Our projections indicate that climate change itself could have no or even slightly positive effects on the distribution of the Brazil nut tree, expected to increase by up to 6% by the year 2090. However, the pollinators of this tree were forecasted lose nearly 50% of their suitable distribution in the future, leading to an almost 80% reduction in co‐occurrence potential. In addition, local pollinator richness was predicted to diminish by 20%, with likely consequences for pollination redundancy and resilience to subsequent environment changes. Although range contractions were also forecasted for some seed dispersers in the future, the overall patterns of potential co‐occurrence between the Brazil nut tree and seed dispersers, as well as local richness of seed dispersers. were mostly unabated. Main conclusions The forecasted declines in pollinator diversity may reduce ecosystem functional redundancy and threaten the long‐term resilience of the services provided by Brazil nut trees. Such pervasive and indirect effects of climate change, often neglected and unaccounted for in most conservation assessments, may have cascading effects upon into economies and human well‐being worldwide.

show abstract

“…Only a handful of studies have attempted to empirically document large-scale patterns of ISA (Gotelli et al 2010, Lyons et al 2016, Tóth et al 2019, Calatayud et al 2020, and ISA has been missing in recent high-profile studies of the ongoing biodiversity change (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment 2005, WWF International 2012, Newbold et al 2015, Blowes et al 2019, IPBES 2019. To investigate this potential knowledge gap more systematically, we conducted two literature searches.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measurement and analysis of interspecific spatial associations as a facet of biodiversity

Keil¹,

Wiegand²,

Tóth³

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Interspecific spatial associations (ISA), which include co-occurrences, segregations, or attractions among two or more species, can provide important insights into the spatial structuring of communities. However, ISA has primarily been examined in the context of understanding interspecific interactions, while other aspects of ISA, including its relations to other biodiversity facets and how it changes in the face of anthropogenic pressures, have been largely neglected. This is likely because it is unclear what makes ISA useful in a biodiversity context, little is known about the theoretical connections between ISA and other biodiversity facets, and there is a confusing variety of approaches to measuring ISA. Here, we first review the metrics of ISA. These include both spatially implicit and explicit indices of association for both binary and abundance data. We test and compare these approaches on empirical and simulated data, and we provide specific recommendations for how to use and interpret them in biodiversity science. We argue that measurements of ISA are more informative when they are spatially explicit (i.e. distance dependent). We then review links of ISA to other classical biodiversity facets, such as alpha, beta, and gamma diversity, and show that they mostly fail to reflect changes/variation in ISA, with the exception of average pair-wise beta diversity. This underscores the need for a specific focus on ISA in large-scale biodiversity assessments. Finally, we argue that there are important, and underappreciated, reasons to study ISA that are unrelated to its link to biotic interactions. Specifically, ISA can provide strong tests of biodiversity theories that require multiple patterns to benchmark against, and it can be explored for potentially predictive macroecological patterns.

show abstract

Reorganization of surviving mammal communities after the end-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction

Cited by 38 publications

References 54 publications

Body mass‐related changes in mammal community assembly patterns during the late Quaternary of North America

Body mass‐related changes in mammal community assembly patterns during the late Quaternary of North America

Climate change drives spatial mismatch and threatens the biotic interactions of the Brazil nut

Measurement and analysis of interspecific spatial associations as a facet of biodiversity

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About