IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v465y2010i7299d10.1038_nature09077.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Small mammal diversity loss in response to late-Pleistocene climatic change

Author

Listed:
  • Jessica L. Blois

    (Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
    Present address: Center for Climatic Research and Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1225 W. Dayton Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1695, USA.)

  • Jenny L. McGuire

    (University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA)

  • Elizabeth A. Hadly

    (Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA)

Abstract

Small-mammal survivors The worldwide extinctions of large mammals (megafauna) at the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 years ago are the stuff of headlines. Did they fall victim to human slaughter or climate change? But what of smaller mammals — rodents, insectivores and the like — which often provide much more comprehensive fossil records than megafauna, and which are much less likely to be the targets of hunting? A study of a rich small-mammal fauna from northern California shows that small mammals were much less likely to respond to the Pleistocene–Holocene transition by becoming extinct. Instead, diversity and evenness suffered, so that less abundant species became rarer, with more generalist 'weed-like' species becoming more common.

Suggested Citation

  • Jessica L. Blois & Jenny L. McGuire & Elizabeth A. Hadly, 2010. "Small mammal diversity loss in response to late-Pleistocene climatic change," Nature, Nature, vol. 465(7299), pages 771-774, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:465:y:2010:i:7299:d:10.1038_nature09077
    DOI: 10.1038/nature09077
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09077
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature09077?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Danielle Fraser & Amelia Villaseñor & Anikó B. Tóth & Meghan A. Balk & Jussi T. Eronen & W. Andrew Barr & A. K. Behrensmeyer & Matt Davis & Andrew Du & J. Tyler Faith & Gary R. Graves & Nicholas J. Go, 2022. "Late quaternary biotic homogenization of North American mammalian faunas," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.
    2. Ariel E Marcy & Scott Fendorf & James L Patton & Elizabeth A Hadly, 2013. "Morphological Adaptations for Digging and Climate-Impacted Soil Properties Define Pocket Gopher (Thomomys spp.) Distributions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(5), pages 1-14, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:465:y:2010:i:7299:d:10.1038_nature09077. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.