Robustness despite uncertainty: regional climate data reveal the dominant role of humans in explaining global extinctions of Late Quaternary megafauna
Robustness despite uncertainty: regional climate data reveal the dominant role of humans in explaining global extinctions of Late Quaternary megafauna
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DOI：
10.1111/ecog.01566
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发表时间：
2016-02-01
期刊：
影响因子：
5.9
通讯作者：
Manica, Andrea
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bartlett, Lewis J.;Williams, David R.;Manica, Andrea
关于晚第四纪巨型动物灭绝的争论集中在人类殖民或气候变化是否是灭绝的更重要驱动因素，很少有灭绝明确归因于任何一个。大多数分析都受到地理或分类学的限制，少数全球定量分析受到时间分辨率粗糙或过于简化的气候重建或代用指标的限制。我们提出了一个全球分析的原因，这些使用高分辨率的气候重建和明确调查的敏感性，我们的结果在古生物记录的不确定性。我们的研究结果表明，人类殖民是全球巨型动物灭绝的主要驱动因素，但气候因素也很重要。我们确定了未来研究可能产生最大影响的地理区域，我们的模型可靠地预测了世界大部分地区的灭绝，但亚洲大陆是一个明显的例外，我们无法解释化石记录中发现的明显低灭绝率。我们的研究结果对古生物学记录中的不确定性具有很强的鲁棒性，我们的主要结论不太可能在小的改进或人类殖民日期的变化后发生质的变化。
Debate over the Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions has focussed on whether human colonisation or climatic changes were more important drivers of extinction, with few extinctions being unambiguously attributable to either. Most analyses have been geographically or taxonomically restricted and the few quantitative global analyses have been limited by coarse temporal resolution or overly simplified climate reconstructions or proxies. We present a global analysis of the causes of these extinctions which uses high-resolution climate reconstructions and explicitly investigates the sensitivity of our results to uncertainty in the palaeological record. Our results show that human colonisation was the dominant driver of megafaunal extinction across the world but that climatic factors were also important. We identify the geographic regions where future research is likely to have the most impact, with our models reliably predicting extinctions across most of the world, with the notable exception of mainland Asia where we fail to explain the apparently low rate of extinction found in in the fossil record. Our results are highly robust to uncertainties in the palaeological record, and our main conclusions are unlikely to change qualitatively following minor improvements or changes in the dates of extinctions and human colonisation.