Megafauna declines and extinctions over the past 40,000 years in eastern monsoonal China: causes, consequences and implications

Abstract

<p indent=0mm>Megafauna species are key to a variety of ecosystems. Closely associated with the global spread of <italic>Homo sapiens</italic> out of Africa since the Late Pleistocene, megafauna declines and extinctions have had profound impacts on the composition, structure and functioning of ecosystems across continents. However, likely due to data inadequacy, the ecological patterns and consequences of megafauna declines and extinctions in East Asia remain less clear. Here, with a focus on eastern monsoonal China for which study efforts are increasingly comprehensive, we review recent progress in archeological sciences to identify the regional patterns and potential drivers of megafauna extinctions in the Late Pleistocene and declines in the Holocene, and discuss the functional roles of megafauna in shaping open/semi-open vegetation landscapes, facilitating long-distance seed dispersal and regulating fire regime within the study area. We found that the majority of 17 megafauna species extinct in the Late Pleistocene were adaptive mixed-feeders of both browse (non-graminoids) and graminoids, presenting a pattern unlikely explained solely by food shortage caused by climate change, while many megafauna species experienced in the Holocene anthropogenic declines linked to societal and agricultural development. Despite incomplete paleoecological evidence at present for the three functional roles of megafauna in China, the absence of wild megafauna populations in today’s human-dominated landscapes would prevent further improvement in ecosystem functionality as well as ecosystem services. Therefore, we suggest that a better understanding of the anthropogenic causes and ecological consequences of megafauna losses since the Late Pleistocene in China will be important for both marking baselines in terms of ecological restoration and managing self-regulated ecosystems compatible with society.