Madrid. A study led by the University of Manchester concludes that mammalian species are being pushed to their ecological limits in areas where they are unlikely to thrive.
The research, led by Jake A. Britnell and Susanne Shultz, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Their results suggest that restriction to poor and marginal habitats is a global conservation threat that is vital to incorporate into conservation assessment and management.
The researchers show that many of the 627 mammalian species with documented range contraction now occur only at the ecological extremes of their historical ranges. 66 and 75 percent of these species were pushed toward extremes of temperature or precipitation, respectively, with the changes worsening as species lose more ground.
“Human pressure causes species to lose distribution area. As they lose it, their niches shrink and they become restricted to a less diverse range of habitats. Our study suggests that range decline is concentrated in niche nuclei, pushing many species to the ecological extremes of their historical range,” Dr. Britnell said in a statement.
This change, called ecological marginalization, carries an increased risk of species extinction. According to the researchers, habitat quality matters for a species’ extinction risk, and ecological marginalization could help explain why some protected areas are more effective than others.
This change occurs because areas that are good for agriculture, grazing, and human settlements have been converted to people’s use. This restricts natural habitats to areas that humans do not want or cannot use. This study shows that these “remnants” can also be low-quality habitats for biodiversity protection.
“If we are preserving species in fundamentally unsuitable habitats, conservation may underperform or even fail. Using historical information can highlight more effective locations or strategies to focus our efforts,” says Professor Shultz.
“If species are protected in marginal areas, conservation efforts are already lagging behind, as they will not survive and reproduce as well as they could. If we identify and protect high-quality environments, we will reinforce more abundant, dense and resilient populations,” says Britnell.
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