Wish you were here: How defaunated is the Atlantic Forest biome of its medium- to large-bodied mammal fauna?

ABSTRACT: Mammals represent the largest-bodied elements of the world's surviving megafauna and provide several key ecosystems services, yet their populations are often under steep decline throughout the tropics. Anthropogenic defaunation is one the most important contemporary threats to modern mammal faunas. Although the Atlantic Forest biome of South America shows several clear signs of defaunation, the extent to which this biome has lost its mammal fauna remains poorly understood. Here, we collate and analyze a comprehensive body of secondary data to quantitatively assess the spatial patterns of defaunation of all medium- to large-bodied Atlantic Forest mammals which were then classed by morpho-ecological traits. We used a Defaunation Index, which was scaled-up to the entire biome using kriging in

SUBMITTER: Bogoni JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6155554 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature