Abstract
Prehistoric and recent extinctions of large-bodied terrestrial herbivores had significant and lasting impacts on Earth’s ecosystems due to the loss of their distinct trait combinations. The world’s surviving large-bodied avian and mammalian herbivores remain among the most threatened taxa. As such, a greater understanding of the ecological impacts of large herbivore losses is increasingly important. However, comprehensive and ecologically-relevant trait datasets for extinct and extant herbivores are lacking. Here, we present HerbiTraits, a comprehensive functional trait dataset for all late Quaternary terrestrial avian and mammalian herbivores ≥10 kg (545 species). HerbiTraits includes key traits that influence how herbivores interact with ecosystems, namely body mass, diet, fermentation type, habitat use, and limb morphology. Trait data were compiled from 557 sources and comprise the best available knowledge on late Quaternary large-bodied herbivores. HerbiTraits provides a tool for the analysis of herbivore functional diversity both past and present and its effects on Earth’s ecosystems.
Highlights
Background & SummaryLarge-bodied terrestrial avian and mammalian herbivores strongly influenced terrestrial ecosystems through much of the Cenozoic–the last 66 million years of Earth history
Human impacts were the primary driver of these extinctions and declines, though possibly in conjunction with climate change[1,2,3]
Large-bodied herbivores are unique in their capacity to consume large quantities of plant biomass and, as the largest terrestrial animals, they are uniquely capable of causing disturbance to vegetation and soils
Summary
Background & SummaryLarge-bodied terrestrial avian and mammalian herbivores strongly influenced terrestrial ecosystems through much of the Cenozoic–the last 66 million years of Earth history. Many of the world’s large-bodied herbivore species became extinct or experienced significant range contractions beginning ~100,000 years ago in the late Quaternary. Large-bodied herbivores are unique in their capacity to consume large quantities of plant biomass and, as the largest terrestrial animals, they are uniquely capable of causing disturbance to vegetation and soils. These taxa exert strong top-down control on ecological communities and ecosystem processes. The causes and ecological legacies of late Quaternary extinctions are key topics of rapidly growing research interest[13,14,15,16,17,18]. The potential for introduced herbivores (either inadvertently or intentionally) to restore lost ecological processes is an important focus of research and debate today[19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]
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