- Title
- Animal Extinctions
- Creator
- Toukhsati, Samia
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Text; Book chapter
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/179276
- Identifier
- vital:15594
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-805247-1.00031-9
- Identifier
- ISBN:978-0-12-805247-1
- Abstract
- Extinctions refer to the death of a single or multiple species (or taxon) and are common in the history of life on this planet. Using the fossil record, it has been estimated that 99.9% of the species that existed on earth is now extinct. Extinctions occur when a species fails to meet or adapt to changing environmental forces (such as global warming or cooling, habitat loss, destruction, or fragmentation) or when species origination is low, creating ecological niches for new, better adapted, species. This process of “background” extinction and new species evolution is natural, occurs continuously, and describes the way life diversified and radiated on this planet. However, when extinctions involve vast numbers of species and appear to occur around the same time in many different regions, as may be the case in modern times, they are termed “mass extinctions”; these are much less common, but greatly reduce species diversity. There is much debate and little consensus as to the cause and timescale of mass extinctions, generally referred to as the “Big Five” extinction events, which mark the point of transition to new geological epochs. This chapter will focus on the modern-day Holocene–Anthropocene extinction, which attributes the possible loss of up to 58,000 species per year to human activities.
- Publisher
- Academic Press
- Relation
- Animals and Human Society Chapter 21 p. 499-518
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- Copyright Elsevier
- Subject
- Extinction; Endangered; Conservation; Anthropocene; Habitat; Climate change; Animal overexploitation; Invasive species
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