Turvey, S;
Crees, JJ;
Di Fonzo, MMI;
(2015)
Historical data as a baseline for conservation: reconstructing long-term faunal extinction dynamics in Late Imperial–modern China.
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences
, 282
(1813)
10.1098/rspb.2015.1299.
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Abstract
Extinction events typically represent extended processes of decline that cannot be reconstructed using short-term studies. Long-term archives are necessary to determine past baselines and the extent of human-caused biodiversity change, but the capacity of historical datasets to provide predictive power for conservation must be assessed within a robust analytical framework. Local Chinese gazetteers represent a >400-year country-level dataset containing abundant information on past environmental conditions and include extensive records of gibbons, which have a restricted present-day distribution but formerly occurred across much of China. Gibbons show pre-twentieth century range contraction, with significant fragmentation by the mid-eighteenth century and population loss escalating in the late nineteenth century. Isolated gibbon populations persisted for ~40 years before local extinction. Populations persisted for longer at higher elevations, and disappeared earlier from northern and eastern regions, with the biogeography of population loss consistent with the contagion model of range collapse in response to human demographic expansion spreading directionally across China. The long-term Chinese historical record can track extinction events and human interactions with the environment across much longer timescales than are usually addressed in ecology, contributing novel baselines for conservation and an increased understanding of extinction dynamics and species vulnerability or resilience to human pressures.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Historical data as a baseline for conservation: reconstructing long-term faunal extinction dynamics in Late Imperial–modern China |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rspb.2015.1299 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.1299 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1470080 |
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