7000 years of turnover: historical contingency and human niche construction shape the Caribbean's Anthropocene biota.

ABSTRACT: The human-mediated movement of species across biogeographic boundaries-whether intentional or accidental-is dramatically reshaping the modern world. Yet humans have been reshaping ecosystems and translocating species for millennia, and acknowledging the deeper roots of these phenomena is important for contextualizing present-day biodiversity loss, ecosystem functioning and management needs. Here, we present the first database of terrestrial vertebrate species introductions spanning the entire anthropogenic history of a system: the Caribbean. We employ this approximately 7000-year dataset to assess the roles of historical contingency and priority effects in shaping present-day community structure and conservation outcomes, finding that serial human colonization events contributed to habitat

SUBMITTER: Kemp ME 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7287370 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature