Towards a better understanding of life history strategies and the implications of habitat destruction on future mammal conservation
Résumé
Mammals first appeared on planet Earth approximately 200 million years ago and have undergone significant and diverse phylogenetic radiations across the continents (Pickrell, 2019).The fossil record reveals a number of extinction events that have led to the appearance and disappearance of a great diversity of species which we know of only by their presence in the fossil record.Overall, we have very little information on a large proportion of the world's extant mammals (Handbook of the Mammals of the World edited by Wilson et al., 2009Wilson et al., -2019)), our current knowledge on the majority of species being scant, and it is possible that we may never know much about many species as they become endangered and their habitat becomes destroyed.The Anthropocene, leading to the sixth major extinction, arising from the loss of biodiversity hotspots and climate change, poses the most significant threat to mammals since the end of the Cretaceous (65 MYA)the event that led to the demise of the dinosaurs (Fortey, 1997).Humans have been responsible for the decimation of many iconic species such as the white and black rhinoceros, the African elephant, the tiger and lion, as well as many primates, all for the trade in animal products such as rhino horn, tiger and lion bone for herbal medicines and the ivory trade for carvings, trinkets, and bracelets.Indeed, entire ecosystems have been destroyed as a consequence of human gluttony, Madagascar being one very sad example of this destruction as a consequence of deforestation (McConnell and Kull, 2014a; McConnell and Kull, 2014b).In South-east Asia deforestation has brought the orangutan, the slow loris and tarsier to the brink of extinction as the demand for palm oils and exotic rainforest timber accelerates (Vijay et al., 2016;Winaarni et al., 2017;Supriatna et al., 2020).Pangolins across Africa and Asia are in crisis as a consequence of the demand for their scales for herbal medicines (e.g., Challender et al., 2020).In South America, the great Amazonian rainforest is under threat from logging, mining, and cattle farming, human activities that put pressure on many mammal species as well as other vertebrates and invertebrates, but soil erosion is also a major issue in the land once occupied by tropical rainforest.Indeed, it has been estimated that less than 35% of the natural terrestrial environment is still pristine and this area is reduced annually (Davidson et al., 2012;Nobre et al., 2016).Knowledge of the life history of most mammals is still fragmentary, this is particularly true for many small mammals occurring in the tropics and subtropics, known biodiversity hotspots (Ceballos and Erhlich, 2006).Life history theory attempts to understand how natural selection acts upon organisms to maximize reproductive success, using knowledge concerning the selective factors operating in the environment (i.e., extrinsic mortality) and
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