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. 2022 Aug 26;377(6609):1008-1011.
doi: 10.1126/science.abn4012. Epub 2022 Aug 25.

Collapse of terrestrial mammal food webs since the Late Pleistocene

Evan C Fricke  1   2   3 , Chia Hsieh  1 , Owen Middleton  4 , Daniel Gorczynski  1 , Caroline D Cappello  5 , Oscar Sanisidro  6 , John Rowan  7 , Jens-Christian Svenning  8 , Lydia Beaudrot  1
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Collapse of terrestrial mammal food webs since the Late Pleistocene

Evan C Fricke et al. Science. .

Abstract

Food webs influence ecosystem diversity and functioning. Contemporary defaunation has reduced food web complexity, but simplification caused by past defaunation is difficult to reconstruct given the sparse paleorecord of predator-prey interactions. We identified changes to terrestrial mammal food webs globally over the past ~130,000 years using extinct and extant mammal traits, geographic ranges, observed predator-prey interactions, and deep learning models. Food webs underwent steep regional declines in complexity through loss of food web links after the arrival and expansion of human populations. We estimate that defaunation has caused a 53% decline in food web links globally. Although extinctions explain much of this effect, range losses for extant species degraded food webs to a similar extent, highlighting the potential for food web restoration via extant species recovery.

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