Abstract
The incipient sixth mass extinction that started in the Late Pleistocene has already erased over 300 mammal species and, with them, more than 2.5 billion y of unique evolutionary history. At the global scale, this lost phylogenetic diversity (PD) can only be restored with time as lineages evolve and create new evolutionary history. Given the increasing rate of extinctions however, can mammals evolve fast enough to recover their lost PD on a human time scale? We use a birth–death tree framework to show that even if extinction rates slow to preanthropogenic background levels, recovery of lost PD will likely take millions of years. These findings emphasize the severity of the potential sixth mass extinction and the need to avoid the loss of unique evolutionary history now.
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Cited by
122 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献