Research published this week in Science offers the clearest picture yet of the reverberating consequences of land mammal declines on food webs over the past 130,000 years.
Research published this week in Science offers the clearest picture yet of the reverberating consequences of land mammal declines on food webs over the past 130,000 years.
It’s not a pretty picture.
“While about 6% of land mammals have gone extinct in that time, we estimate that more than 50% of mammal food web links have disappeared,” said ecologist Evan Fricke, lead author of the study. “And the mammals most likely to decline, both in the past and now, are key for mammal food web complexity.”
A food web contains all of the links between predators and their prey in a geographic area. Complex food webs are important for regulating populations in ways that allow more species to coexist, supporting ecosystem biodiversity and stability. But animal declines can degrade this complexity, undermining ecosystem resilience.
Read more at Rice University
Image: A predator-prey interaction between cheetahs and an impala in Kruger National Park, South Africa in June 2015. (Credit: Evan Fricke)
