Intact but empty forests? Patterns of hunting-induced mammal defaunation in the tropics.

ABSTRACT: Tropical forests are increasingly degraded by industrial logging, urbanization, agriculture, and infrastructure, with only 20% of the remaining area considered intact. However, this figure does not include other, more cryptic but pervasive forms of degradation, such as overhunting. Here, we quantified and mapped the spatial patterns of mammal defaunation in the tropics using a database of 3,281 mammal abundance declines from local hunting studies. We simultaneously accounted for population abundance declines and the probability of local extirpation of a population as a function of several predictors related to human accessibility to remote areas and species' vulnerability to hunting. We estimated an average abundance decline of 13% across all tropical mammal species, with medium-sized spec

SUBMITTER: Benitez-Lopez A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6516652 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature