PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Dirzo, Rodolfo
AU  - Young, Hillary S.
AU  - Galetti, Mauro
AU  - Ceballos, Gerardo
AU  - Isaac, Nick J. B.
AU  - Collen, Ben
TI  - Defaunation in the Anthropocene
AID  - 10.1126/science.1251817
DP  - 2014 Jul 25
TA  - Science
PG  - 401--406
VI  - 345
IP  - 6195
4099  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/345/6195/401.short
4100  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/345/6195/401.full
SO  - Science2014 Jul 25; 345
AB  - We live amid a global wave of anthropogenically driven biodiversity loss: species and population extirpations and, critically, declines in local species abundance. Particularly, human impacts on animal biodiversity are an under-recognized form of global environmental change. Among terrestrial vertebrates, 322 species have become extinct since 1500, and populations of the remaining species show 25% average decline in abundance. Invertebrate patterns are equally dire: 67% of monitored populations show 45% mean abundance decline. Such animal declines will cascade onto ecosystem functioning and human well-being. Much remains unknown about this “Anthropocene defaunation”; these knowledge gaps hinder our capacity to predict and limit defaunation impacts. Clearly, however, defaunation is both a pervasive component of the planet’s sixth mass extinction and also a major driver of global ecological change.