Extinction Filtering:
Recent study finds that human activities outside protected areas are driving biodiversity loss and extinction filtering is affecting sensitive species.
- It is the process where species sensitive to human disturbance disappear, leaving only those that can survive in degraded landscapes.
- It predicts that species that have evolved and survived in high-disturbance environments should be more likely to persist in the face of new disturbances, including those of habitat loss and fragmentation
- It results in a less diverse and more uniform mix of species in tropical forests.
- Over time, this weakens entire ecosystems and reduces their ability to recover from environmental changes.
- The recent study suggests the existence of anthropogenic extinction filtering acting on mammals in tropical forests, whereby human overpopulation has driven the most sensitive species to local extinction while remaining ones are able to persist.
- The problem of “extinction filtering” is not unique to tropical forests. Across the world, human activities are affecting wildlife inside protected areas.
