Demography

Ecology

Biology

Trophic cascade

Extinction (optical mineralogy)

Food web

Defaunation

Food science

Environmental change

Anthropocene

Paleontology

Climate change

Geography

Rumen

Population

Sociology

Abundance (ecology)

Invertebrate

Biodiversity

Fermentation

Global biodiversity

Ecosystem

Science

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.

Defaunation in the Anthropocene