Does the jack of all trades fare best? Survival and niche width in Late Pleistocene megafauna

Abstract

Aim: We sought to assess different megafaunal species responses to the intense climatic changes that characterized the end of the Quaternary. Location: Eurasia. Methods: We used species distribution modelling, niche overlap tests and co-occurrence analysis to model climatic niche evolution and change in six different megafauna species, including three extinct (woolly mammoth, woolly rhino and steppe bison) and three extant (red deer, wolf and reindeer) species. Results: Co-occurrence analysis indicates mammoth, rhino, reindeer and steppe bison to be significantly associated to each other in the fossil record in cold, arid environments. In contrast, red deer and wolf show no evidence for strong habitat requirements, although they both tended to be associated with more humid conditions than the other megafauna. Woolly mammoth and the woolly rhino were the best adapted to the cold, arid conditions dominating the Eurasian landscapes during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Extant species did not exhibit larger climatic niches than extinct species, but changed more from one period to the next than those of extinct species. Main conclusions: Although they did not have wider climatic niches, and were the least adapted to cold climates, red deer and the wolf were able to withstand the harsh climatic conditions of the LGM. Conversely, the now extinct mammoth and woolly rhino did not survive the demise of the LGM environment. Although "cold-adapted", reindeer survived the LGM by occupying a northerly distribution similar to today. Independent evidence indicates the steppe bison lineage might have survived in North America. Our data are consistent with a strong climatic control on the fate of late Quaternary megafauna species in Eurasia. We were unable to exclude a sizeable effect of human intervention by overhunting

Integrating climate and land‐use change scenarios in modelling the future spread of invasive squirrels in Italy

“…For regional SDMs calibration, we followed the "ensemble of small models" approach to avoid model overfitting (Breiner, Guisan, Bergamini, & Nobis, 2015;Di Febbraro et al, 2017), a problem arising when few records are available with respect to the number of predictors (Guisan & Zimmermann, 2000). Accordingly, we calibrated for each species a set of models considering all possible combinations of the eight environmental variables taken by two at a time (for a total of 28 combinations per species), and then averaging the results.…”

Current and future potential distributions of three Dracaena Vand. ex L. species under two contrasting climate change scenarios in Africa

“…predict not only the current species occurrence probability but also the probability in past and future climates (Febbraro et al, 2017;Kukwa & Kolanowska, 2016). Recently, the future climate change scenario generation process has been redesigned from a sequential to a parallel approach.…”

Additive effects of climate change and human hunting explain population decline and extinction in cave bears

“…; Di Febbraro et al . ). Amongst the European extinct megafauna resides what is perhaps the most common of all fossil mammals, the cave bear ( Ursus spelaeus ).…”

“…The ever-increasing hunting ability of Palaeolithic hunters, and the extraordinary intensity (in terms of both magnitude and rapidity) of climatic changes are amongst the causes commonly recognized as drivers of this extinction crisis (Dirzo et al 2014;Ceballos et al 2015). The effect of human hunting on the megafauna is said to have been more important where species were na€ ıve to H. sapiens, that is in Oceania and the Americas, and milder elsewhere, such as in Europe (Barnosky et al 2004;Sandom et al 2014;Di Febbraro et al 2017). Amongst the European extinct megafauna resides what is perhaps the most common of all fossil mammals, the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus).…”