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Situating defaunation in an operational framework to advance biodiversity conservation

Anthropogenic pressures are causing the widespread loss of wildlife species and populations, with adverse consequences for ecosystem functioning. This phenomenon has been widely but inconsistently referred to as defaunation. A cohesive, quantitative framework for defining and evaluating defaunation...

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Autores principales: Poulsen, John R, Maicher, Vincent, Malinowski, Halina, DeSisto, Camille
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10580966/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37854893
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad079
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author Poulsen, John R
Maicher, Vincent
Malinowski, Halina
DeSisto, Camille
author_facet Poulsen, John R
Maicher, Vincent
Malinowski, Halina
DeSisto, Camille
author_sort Poulsen, John R
collection PubMed
description Anthropogenic pressures are causing the widespread loss of wildlife species and populations, with adverse consequences for ecosystem functioning. This phenomenon has been widely but inconsistently referred to as defaunation. A cohesive, quantitative framework for defining and evaluating defaunation is necessary for advancing biodiversity conservation. Likening defaunation to deforestation, we propose an operational framework for defaunation that defines it and related terms, situates defaunation relative to intact communities and faunal degradation, and encourages quantitative, ecologically reasonable, and equitable measurements. We distinguish between defaunation, the conversion of an ecosystem from having wild animals to not having wild animals, and faunal degradation, the process of losing animals or species from an animal community. The quantification of context-relevant defaunation boundaries or baselines is necessary to compare faunal communities over space and time. Situating a faunal community on the degradation curve can promote Global Biodiversity Framework targets, advancing the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity.
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spelling pubmed-105809662023-10-18 Situating defaunation in an operational framework to advance biodiversity conservation Poulsen, John R Maicher, Vincent Malinowski, Halina DeSisto, Camille Bioscience Overview Article Anthropogenic pressures are causing the widespread loss of wildlife species and populations, with adverse consequences for ecosystem functioning. This phenomenon has been widely but inconsistently referred to as defaunation. A cohesive, quantitative framework for defining and evaluating defaunation is necessary for advancing biodiversity conservation. Likening defaunation to deforestation, we propose an operational framework for defaunation that defines it and related terms, situates defaunation relative to intact communities and faunal degradation, and encourages quantitative, ecologically reasonable, and equitable measurements. We distinguish between defaunation, the conversion of an ecosystem from having wild animals to not having wild animals, and faunal degradation, the process of losing animals or species from an animal community. The quantification of context-relevant defaunation boundaries or baselines is necessary to compare faunal communities over space and time. Situating a faunal community on the degradation curve can promote Global Biodiversity Framework targets, advancing the 2050 Vision for Biodiversity. Oxford University Press 2023-09-19 /pmc/articles/PMC10580966/ /pubmed/37854893 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad079 Text en © The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Overview Article
Poulsen, John R
Maicher, Vincent
Malinowski, Halina
DeSisto, Camille
Situating defaunation in an operational framework to advance biodiversity conservation
title Situating defaunation in an operational framework to advance biodiversity conservation
title_full Situating defaunation in an operational framework to advance biodiversity conservation
title_fullStr Situating defaunation in an operational framework to advance biodiversity conservation
title_full_unstemmed Situating defaunation in an operational framework to advance biodiversity conservation
title_short Situating defaunation in an operational framework to advance biodiversity conservation
title_sort situating defaunation in an operational framework to advance biodiversity conservation
topic Overview Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10580966/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37854893
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad079
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