Bias, incompleteness and the 'known unknowns' in the Holocene faunal record.

ABSTRACT: Long-term faunal data are needed to track biodiversity change and extinction over wide spatio-temporal scales. The Holocene record is a particularly rich and well-resolved resource for this purpose but nonetheless represents a biased subset of the original faunal composition, both at the site-level assemblage and when data are pooled for wider-scale analysis. We investigated patterns and potential sources of taxonomic, spatial and temporal bias in two Holocene datasets of mammalian occurrence and abundance, one at the global species level and one at the continental population-level. Larger-bodied species are disproportionately abundant in the Holocene fossil record, but this varies according to trophic level, probably owing to past patterns of human subsistence and exploitation. Despite th

SUBMITTER: Crees JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6863487 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature