Early Humans Did Not Cause Island Extinctions, According to New Study

UngulateNerd92

UngulateNerd92

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Islands are particularly prone to widespread extinction of plants and animals. Over the last few thousand years, much of the blame for these losses is generally attributed to human activities. But the first global assessment of the possible link between the arrival of early humans and close human ancestors on islands and island extinction shows that was not always the case.

Early Humans Did Not Cause Island Extinctions | AMNH
 
UngulateNerd92 said:
Thank you for your interest. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
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I think that @Terry Thomas is quite right to say that "not always" is the right phrasing with regards to the article.

However, I do think the findings of this paper are interesting because so many Holocene mass extinction events on islands (and mainland continents) whether the giant ground sloths in the Caribbean or the hippos of Madagascar have been attributed to being caused by humans.

This paper is interesting because of its argument that on many islands there were natural extinctions events that cannot be attributed to anthropogenic causes which is quite a change from the dominant (and occasionally biased?) narrative.

We know through the study of biogeography that insular species are particularly prone to extinctions whether natural or anthropogenic and as the authors argues I'm sure that there have been many natural extinctions and this study will add much more nuance to the subject.
 
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As a question is it possible the find the full paper/study? As the article doesn't include any real specific information.
 
Thanks for the article, although it is always better to link an original article than a popular article with some dumbing down.

My comments:
- This does NOT cover well-known island extinctions in Holocene, within the last few 1000s of years. It does not deal with, for example, moas on New Zealand, giant owls on Carribbean or giant lemurs on Madagascar.
- This article concerns Pleistocene 10,000 years and more ago, and arrival of humans with much lower technology or not modern hominins Homo erectus, floresiensis and luzonensis.
- This article carefully says 'no evidence' which is important given the below:
- Much data is low quality, there is huge uncertainty about timing of animal extinction and arrival of humans / hominids. Even the list of animals known and species of hominin is sometimes uncertain. So 'no evidence' can mean 'we don't know'.
- Many concerned islands were linked to mainland continents in Pleistocene, so were not islands at all,
- The article potentially suffers also from a bias from selection of islands and evidence. For example, on some islands, extinction of little rodents is mentioned, which were unlikely to be hunted.

For me, it changes nothing about effect of civilization on wildlife. But Zoochat readers could learn something else: how popular media change the meaning of the science discovery: from Pleistocene extinctions to all extinctions, and from no evidence to evidence of absence.
 
Jurek7 said:
Thanks for the article, although it is always better to link an original article than a popular article with some dumbing down.

My comments:
- This does NOT cover well-known island extinctions in Holocene, within the last few 1000s of years. It does not deal with, for example, moas on New Zealand, giant owls on Carribbean or giant lemurs on Madagascar.
- This article concerns Pleistocene 10,000 years and more ago, and arrival of humans with much lower technology or not modern hominins Homo erectus, floresiensis and luzonensis.
- This article carefully says 'no evidence' which is important given the below:
- Much data is low quality, there is huge uncertainty about timing of animal extinction and arrival of humans / hominids. Even the list of animals known and species of hominin is sometimes uncertain. So 'no evidence' can mean 'we don't know'.
- Many concerned islands were linked to mainland continents in Pleistocene, so were not islands at all,
- The article potentially suffers also from a bias from selection of islands and evidence. For example, on some islands, extinction of little rodents is mentioned, which were unlikely to be hunted.

For me, it changes nothing about effect of civilization on wildlife. But Zoochat readers could learn something else: how popular media change the meaning of the science discovery: from Pleistocene extinctions to all extinctions, and from no evidence to evidence of absence.
Click to expand...

Yes, I don't think this study ultimately changes anything about the anthropogenic drivers of extinction on island biodiversity as it doesn't bring this into question.

As you've rightly said it doesn't explain famous examples of extinction like the moas in NZ, the sub-fossil lemurs in Madagascar or many of the caribbean examples of extinction but then again the paper isn't seeking to write these off as being natural extinction events.

All the authors are actually suggesting is that there is more nuance to the debate surrounding extinction events on islands and at least some of these which were previously attributed to the arrival of humans to these insular ecosystems were erroneous.
 
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