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10 results for “megafauna extinction”
Data from: The legacy of the extinct Neotropical megafauna on plants and biomes
<p>The main dataset consists of ecoregion-level data on five plant functional traits (wood density, leaf size, stem spines, leaf spines and latex production), as well as ecoregion-level data on extinct megafauna historical patterns, fire, climate, soil, hurricanes and geografical variables (first spreadsheet) for the Neotropical biogeographic realm (Table 1). It also includes species-level plant functional trait data, and the abundance (presence-absence for leaf size) of these species, and the occurrences extinct megafauna and extant mammal herbivore species per Neotropical ecoregion, as well as diet data compiled for megafauna species. The species-level functional trait data was compiled from the literature and the names of the species in these data was used to search for occurrence data for these species in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (Data available from GBIF using the following doi: WD: 10.15468/dl.3vua3x; Stem spines: 10.15468/dl.ar5ddj; Latex: 10.15468/dl.m8dzjd; Leaf spines: 10.15468/dl.vv8gw4; Leaf size: 10.15468/dl.k98nxc). During the process, species level were corrected and updated using tools from the "rgbif" package for R. We then croped only the Neotropical region, and calculate ecoregion level trait means for continuous traits (Wood Density and Leaf Size) and maximum por binary traits (Stem and Leaf Spines, Latex), using the ecoregion shapefile provided in https://storage.googleapis.com/teow2016/Ecoregions2017.zip. We obtained data on historical distribution of megafauna species and extant mammal species from the MegaPast2Future/PHYLACINE_1.2 dataset, and obtained diet information from literature sources. Climate data was obtained from WorldClim 2.1 (10 minute spatial resolution) and was based on climate data from 1970 and 2000. Soil data were obtained from SoilGrids (5 km of spatial resolution), and consisted of mean values for two depths, 0.05 and 2 m. We obtained the number (a proxy for frequency) and intensity of wildfires per ecoregion area using the MODIS active fire location product (MCD14ML). We only considered fires with detection confidence of 95% or higher occurring from November 2000 to December 2019 (both included). To ensure that only wildfires were considered, we associated each fire pixel with a land cover type (300 m of spatial resolution) from for a buffer area of 1000 m surrounding the fire pixel centroid. We excluded all of the fires occurring in areas in which more than 10% of the surrounding land cover pixels corresponded to agricultural, urban and water classes. We calculated the number of wildfires per ecoregion area by dividing the fire count of each Ecoregion by the ecoregion area, and multiplying the resulting value by the proportion of vegetated land cover pixels (same classes used to exclude fires in anthropogenic areas and water bodies above). Fire intensity was estimated as the average fire radiative power across all detected wildfires in the ecoregion. We also classified ecoregions into insular (1), when most of the ecoregion area was located in islands, vs. continental (0), otherwise. We also compiled data on hurricane activity, as woody density was suggested to confer resistance against this disturbance. We used data from 1990 to 2019 from the HURDAT2 dataset, containing six-hourly information about the location of all of the known tropical and subtropical cyclones (0.1° latitude/longitude). We used the sum of hurricane occurrences per ecoregions divided by ecoregion area as an indicator of hurricane activity.</p> <p>Three .txt files containing the custom codes developed for building the Ecoregion-level dataset (predictors and traits) and for data analyses used in the article are also included.</p>
The Identification of Extinct Megafauna in Rock art Using Geometric Morphometrics: A Genyornis newtoni Painting in Arnhem Land, Northern Australia?
<p>Raw data files used for the analysis of a contentiously identified rock-art image located in Arnhem Land, Northern Australia. The data were used to test a novel approach to quantifying species identification in rock art images to assess the extent to which an image resembles other rock art of sound identification or anatomical images of visually similar species.</p> <p>Included files are the raw coordinate data files ("[feature] PCA file", .txt format) for use in Morphologika2, and formatted files for use in CVAGen8 ("[feature]" x1y1 file for CVA", .x1y1 format; "[feature] group file", .txt format).</p> <p>Files produced using software by Rohlf (2015) and Sheets (2014)</p>
Data from: First 87Sr/86Sr Isotope data for the extinct sloth Lestodon armatus: Insights into the spatial ecology of South American Late Pleistocene Megafauna
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Data from: Seed dispersal anachronisms: rethinking the fruits extinct megafauna ate
BACKGROUND: Some neotropical, fleshy-fruited plants have fruits structurally similar to paleotropical fruits dispersed by megafauna (mammals >103 kg), yet these dispersers were extinct in South America 10–15 Kyr BP. Anachronic dispersal systems are best explained by interactions with extinct animals and show impaired dispersal resulting in altered seed dispersal dynamics. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We introduce an operational definition of megafaunal fruits and perform a comparative analysis of 103 Neotropical fruit species fitting this dispersal mode. We define two megafaunal fruit types based on previous analyses of elephant fruits: fruits 4–10 cm in diameter with up to five large seeds, and fruits >10 cm diameter with numerous small seeds. Megafaunal fruits are well represented in unrelated families such as Sapotaceae, Fabaceae, Solanaceae, Apocynaceae, Malvaceae, Caryocaraceae, and Arecaceae and combine an overbuilt design (large fruit mass and size) with either a single or few (<3 seeds) extremely large seeds or many small seeds (usually >100 seeds). Within-family and within-genus contrasts between megafaunal and non-megafaunal groups of species indicate a marked difference in fruit diameter and fruit mass but less so for individual seed mass, with a significant trend for megafaunal fruits to have larger seeds and seediness. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Megafaunal fruits allow plants to circumvent the trade-off between seed size and dispersal by relying on frugivores able to disperse enormous seed loads over long-distances. Present-day seed dispersal by scatter-hoarding rodents, introduced livestock, runoff, flooding, gravity, and human-mediated dispersal allowed survival of megafauna-dependent fruit species after extinction of the major seed dispersers. Megafauna extinction had several potential consequences, such as a scale shift reducing the seed dispersal distances, increasingly clumped spatial patterns, reduced geographic ranges and limited genetic variation and increased among-population structuring. These effects could be extended to other plant species dispersed by large vertebrates in present-day, defaunated communities.
Beringia megafauna extinctions during last deglacial climatic transitions
<p>The causes of last deglacial megafauna extinctions in Beringia remain highly debated, with evidence pointing to climate change, human hunting, or a combination of both. One key uncertainty is associated with the current poor understanding of regional climate evolution in part due to lack of integrated proxy-model analyses, though studies of the globe repeatedly documented large climate shifts of this time period. Here, we present terrestrial temperature and moisture reconstructions since the Last Glacial Maximum by magnetic and geochemical measurements in a sediment core collected from the northern shelf of the Bering Sea. We reconstruct the marine-terrestrial environmental teleconnections, corresponding to warmer and wetter conditions between 14,700 and 13,500 years ago associated with the Bølling/Allerød interstadial (BA). Our climate model analysis confirms proxy data and attributes the climatic amelioration to increased regional heat and moisture transport from the low-latitude North Pacific Ocean, accompanied by a northward expansion of the Westerly Jet. The increased temperature and moisture availability facilitated the expansion of shrub tundra to the expanse of the previously dominating grass and forb rangelands, which appears to lead to the disappearance of megafauna grazers during the onset of BA. Our findings emphasize a crucial role of climate-driven habitat losses in contributing to the turnover in mammal communities across the last deglacial Beringia.</p>
Data for: The role of habitat fragmentation in Pleistocene megafauna extinction in Eurasia by Mondanaro et al.
<p>This dataset provides the complete list of data and necessary information in order to reproduce all the analyses performed in the paper:<br> "Mondanaro, A., Di Febbraro, M., Melchionna, M., Maiorano, L., Di Marco, M., Edwards, N.R., Holden, P.B., Castiglione, S., Rook, L., Raia, P. (2021)<br> The role of habitat fragmentation in Pleistocene megafauna extinction in Eurasia. Ecography, online version"</p> <p>The idea<b> </b>that than several small, rather than a single large, habitat areas, should hold the highest total species richness (the so-called SLOSS debate) brings into question the importance of habitat fragmentation to extinction risk. SLOSS studies are generally addressed over a short time scale, potentially ignoring the long-term dimension of extinction risk. Here, we provide the first long-term evaluation of the role of habitat fragmentation in species extinction, focusing on 22 large mammal species that lived in Eurasia during the last 200,000 years. By combining species distribution models and landscape pattern analysis, we compared temporal dynamics of habitat spatial structure between extinct and extant species, estimating size, number, and degree of geographical isolation of their suitable habitat patches. Our results evidenced that extinct mammals went through considerable habitat fragmentation during the last glacial period and started to fare worse than extant species from about 50 ka. In particular, our modelling effort constrains the fragmentation of habitats into a narrow time window, from 46 to 36 kilo years ago, surprisingly coinciding with known extinction dates of several megafauna species. Landscape spatial structure was the second most important driver affecting megafauna extinction risk (ca. 38% importance), after body mass (ca. 39%) and followed by dietary preferences (ca. 20%). Our results indicate a major role played by landscape fragmentation on extinction. Such evidence provides insights on what might likely happen in the future, with climate change, habitat loss, and fragmentation acting as the main forces exerting their negative effects on biodiversity.</p>
Late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions have strongly reduced mammalian vegetation consumption
<p>Scrips and data for recreating the results and figures in the paper Late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions have strongly reduced mammalian vegetation consumption<br> DOI: 10.1111/geb.13723<br> Journal Global Ecology and Biogeography:<br> <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/geb.13723">https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/geb.13723</a></p> <p>The three folders work as stand alone R-Studio projects, for estimating metabolic rates, densities, and the finally calculating total carbon consumption and creating summary statistics and figures. They require PHYLACINE v. 1.2.1 (https://zenodo.org/record/3690867) to be in another folder next to them.</p>
Data for: The role of habitat fragmentation in Pleistocene megafauna extinction in Eurasia by Mondanaro et al.
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Data from: Seed dispersal anachronisms: rethinking the fruits extinct megafauna ate
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Data from: Changes in the diet and body size of a small herbivorous mammal (Sigmodon hispidus, hispid cotton rat) following the Late Pleistocene megafauna extinction
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