Selectivity of terrestrial gastropod extinctions on an oceanic archipelago and insights into the anthropogenic extinction process.

ABSTRACT: Anthropogenic impacts have led to widespread extinctions of species on oceanic islands but the nature of many of these extinctions remains poorly known. Here we investigate extinction selectivities of terrestrial gastropods from the Ogasawara archipelago in the northwest Pacific, where anthropogenic threats have changed over time, shifting primarily from the effects of habitat loss to predation by a variety of different predators. Across all of the islands, extinct species had significantly smaller geographic ranges compared with species that are still alive, but among the surviving species, ranges of those that are currently declining due to human impacts do not differ significantly from those that are not threatened. Extinctions were selective with respect to spire index (SI) of shells,

SUBMITTER: Chiba S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3111321 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature