Abstract
Simple SummaryThe geographic ranges of animal species play an important role for many ecological processes. Changes in climate, as well as human conversion of natural habitats, are two major factors that affect species’ range sizes. While the impact of these two factors in the Industrial era has been thoroughly studied, their pre-Industrial impacts are less well understood further back in time. Here, we combine global reconstructions of land use and climate from 6000 BCE to 1850 CE with data of the geographic distributions and habitat requirements of 16,919 mammal, bird, and amphibian species to estimate how human land use and natural climatic change have altered species’ ranges across past millennia. Our results suggest that pre-Industrial land use had only a small impact, yet one that affected almost all species negatively. Climatic variation evidently led to some range expansions and contractions, but overall had a small impact on the majority of species. In the context of a previous study of range changes in the more recent past, our results demonstrate that current rates of range losses exceed the magnitude of range changes seen over many thousands of years prior to the Industrial period to an alarming extent.Anthropogenic land use and climate change in the Industrial age have had substantial impacts on the geographic ranges of the world’s terrestrial animal species. How do these impacts compare against those in the millennia preceding the Industrial era? Here, we combine reconstructions of global climate and land use from 6000 BCE to 1850 CE with empirical data on the spatial distributions and habitat requirements of 16,919 mammal, bird, and amphibian species to estimate changes in their range sizes through time. We find that land use had only a small, yet almost entirely negative impact during most of the study period, whilst natural climatic variability led to some range expansions and contractions; but, overall it had a small impact on the majority of species. Our results provide a baseline for comparison with studies of range changes during the Industrial period, demonstrating that contemporary rates of range loss exceed the magnitude of range changes seen over many thousands of years prior to the Industrial period by an alarming extent.
Highlights
IntroductionClimatic change and anthropogenic land use are two major factors affecting the spatial extent of species’
In addition to considering the effects of land use and climate change in combination, we examined two scenarios in which we isolated each of these two factors
Whilst the median range did not change much, this was the result of a dynamic process in which many species did undergo range changes, as revealed by the increase in the variability of range size change as we go back in time
Summary
Climatic change and anthropogenic land use are two major factors affecting the spatial extent of species’. Habitats [5,6] In recent times, they have both led to severe range contractions for some species [5,7,8,9,10,11] and range expansions for others [5,12], resulting, respectively, in the introduction of species into new areas and the local extinction of others. Future projections of global land use and climate change suggest that species’ geographic ranges will continue to be subject to significant shifts [5,13,14]
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