Functional diversity of marine megafauna in the Anthropocene
- Pimiento, C. ORCID Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Box 2072, Balboa, Panama.
- Leprieur, F. Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), Paris, France.
- Silvestro, D. Department of Computational Biology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne 1015, Switzerland.
- Lefcheck, J. S. ORCID Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network, MarineGEO, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD 21037, USA.
- Albouy, C. IFREMER, Unité Ecologie et Modèles pour l’Halieutique, Nantes Cedex 3, France.
- Rasher, D. B. ORCID Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, 60 Bigelow Drive, East Boothbay, ME 04544, USA.
- Davis, M. ORCID Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA.
- Svenning, J.-C. ORCID Center for Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing World (BIOCHANGE) and Section for Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity, Department of Biology, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
- Griffin, J. N. ORCID Department of Biosciences, Swansea University, Wallace Building, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK.
- 2020-4-17
Published in:
- Science Advances. - American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 2020, vol. 6, no. 16, p. eaay7650
English
Marine megafauna, the largest animals in the oceans, serve key roles in ecosystem functioning. Yet, one-third of these animals are at risk of extinction. To better understand the potential consequences of megafaunal loss, here we quantify their current functional diversity, predict future changes under different extinction scenarios, and introduce a new metric [functionally unique, specialized and endangered (FUSE)] that identifies threatened species of particular importance for functional diversity. Simulated extinction scenarios forecast marked declines in functional richness if current trajectories are maintained during the next century (11% globally; up to 24% regionally), with more marked reductions (48% globally; up to 70% at the poles) beyond random expectations if all threatened species eventually go extinct. Among the megafaunal groups, sharks will incur a disproportionate loss of functional richness. We identify top FUSE species and suggest a renewed focus on these species to preserve the ecosystem functions provided by marine megafauna.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- gold
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aay7650
- ISSN 2375-2548
- Persistent URL
- https://sonar.ch/global/documents/117341
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