Mammal species occupy different climates following the expansion of human impacts.

ABSTRACT: Cities and agricultural fields encroach on the most fertile, habitable terrestrial landscapes, fundamentally altering global ecosystems. Today, 75% of terrestrial ecosystems are considerably altered by human activities, and landscape transformation continues to accelerate. Human impacts are one of the major drivers of the current biodiversity crisis, and they have had unprecedented consequences on ecosystem function and rates of species extinctions for thousands of years. Here we use the fossil record to investigate whether changes in geographic range that could result from human impacts have altered the climatic niches of 46 species covering six mammal orders within the contiguous United States. Sixty-seven percent of the studied mammals have significantly different climatic niches today

SUBMITTER: Pineda-Munoz S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7812786 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature