Plio-Pleistocene African megaherbivore losses associated with community biomass restructuring

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bibi, Faysal; Cantalapiedra, Juan L.
• 署名单位: Leibniz Institut fur Evolutions und Biodiversitatsforschung; Universidad de Alcala
• 刊物名称: SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0036-10667
• DOI: 10.1126/science.add8366
• 发表日期: 2023-06-08
• 页码: 1076-1080
• 关键词: population-density; mammals; climate; record; size

摘要

Fossil abundance data can reveal ecological dynamics underpinning taxonomic declines. Using fossil dental metrics, we reconstructed body mass and mass-abundance distributions in Late Miocene to recent African large mammal communities. Despite collection biases, fossil and extant mass-abundance distributions are highly similar, with unimodal distributions likely reflecting savanna environments. Above 45 kilograms, abundance decreases exponentially with mass, with slopes close to -0.75, as predicted by metabolic scaling. Furthermore, communities before similar to 4 million years ago had considerably more large-sized individuals, with a greater proportion of total biomass allocated in larger size categories, than did later communities. Over time, individuals and biomass were redistributed into smaller size categories, reflecting a gradual loss of large-sized individuals from the fossil record paralleling the long-term decline of Plio-Pleistocene large mammal diversity.