Five centuries of over-exploitation has halved mammal populations in South America’s Atlantic Forest – according to new research from the University of East Anglia.
A new analysis of mammal populations, published today in the journal PLoS ONE, has revealed the devastating effects of human disturbance over the last 500 years.
More than half of the local species assemblages – sets of co-existing species – of medium and large mammals living in the forest have died out since the area was first colonised in the 1500s.
Human activity is largely responsible for this overwhelming biodiversity loss according to the study, which compared inventories published over the past 30 years with baseline data going back to historical times in Colonial Brazil.
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Image via University of East Anglia.