How the Red Queen Drives Terrestrial Mammals to Extinction

Abstract

Background Extinction Diversity results through both the processes of species origination and extinction. However, studies of extinction have tended to focus on mass extinctions, despite the fact that the background extinction represents a greater loss in terms of the absolute number of extinct taxa. In order to identify what factors affect this rate of background extinction, Quental and Marshall (p. 290 , published online 20 June) explored the dynamics of 19 mammalian clades and compared the rates of expansions and declines among taxa to expected models assuming random processes. Most clades decline to extinction in a “driven” manner—that is, faster than expected by chance alone.