The sixth extinction – that is the present global biodiversity crisis is current and on-going. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) suggests the disappearance of at least 1.07% of Earth’s vertebrate species over the past 500 years, a number that is probably grossly underestimated given the lack of subfossil data and poor documentation of taxa for most regions. Current estimates an extinction rate increase in hundreds or even thousands of times over natural background extinction frequency.
In a new paper, Bochaton et al. note that large-scale extinction is one of the defining challenges of our time, as human processes fundamentally and irreversibly reshape global ecosystems. While the extinction of large animals with popular appeal garners widespread public and research interest, the importance of smaller, less “charismatic” fauna to ecosystem health is increasingly recognized. Benefitting from systematically collected fossil and archaeological archives, the authors examined snake and lizard extinctions in the Guadeloupe Islands of the Caribbean. Study of 43,000 bone remains across six islands revealed a massive extinction of 50 to 70% of Guadeloupe’s snakes and lizards following European colonization. In contrast, earlier Indigenous populations coexisted with snakes and lizards for thousands of years without affecting their diversity. Study of archaeological remains provides insights into the causes of snake and lizard extinctions and shows that failure to consider fossil-derived data probably contributes to substantial underestimation of human impacts to global biodiversity.
Citation
Bochaton C, E Paradis, S Bailon, S Grouard, I Ineich, A Lenoble, O Lorvelec, A Tresset, N Boivin 2021. Large-scale reptile extinctions following European colonization of the Guadeloupe Islands. Sciences Advances 7(21):esabg2111.
