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E-book Bats in the Anthropocene: Conservation of Bats in a Changing World

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Penilaian

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The world in which we live is fragile; a small layer of organismic activity covers the planet like a microbial film on top of a large boulder. Nonetheless, humans treat the Earth as if anthropogenic impacts on this delicate biological layer may be absorbed by unfailing natural buffers. Yet, convergent and overwhelming evidence from all over the world underlines that mankind has already changed and contin-ues changing the face of our planet. Among the many transformations humans imposed on our planet, some of the most severe appear to be (1) the addition of more than 550 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere which are the main drivers of global climate change and ocean acidification (Gray 2007; Ciasi and Sabine 2013), (2) the alteration of the global nitrogen cycle by the use of artificial fertilizers (Canfield et al. 2010), (3) the routing of more than one third of global primary production to human consumption (Krausmann et al. 2013), (4) the ongo-ing mass extinction of species (Barnosky et al. 2011), and (5) the globalization of transport which has resulted in the spread of invasive species and pathogens (Lewis and Maslin 2015). It is now widely recognized that global ecosystem ser-vices may be inadvertently suffering from human action, because human-induced environmental impacts are overriding natural process that have dominated our planet for millions of years (Steffen et al. 2011).In the face of lasting human impacts on the Earth’s geological conditions and processes, many scientists, beginning with Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000, now posit that our actions have brought us to the dawn of a new geologi-cal epoch—the Anthropocene. The pros and cons regarding this definition, which literally means “Human Epoch” and would succeed the Holocene, are still heavily debated (Monastersky 2015). Yet skeptics are declining in number, and much of the current debate focuses on the exact beginning of the Anthropocene, generally considered to be c. 1800. The Anthropocene working group of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy reports to the International Commission on Stratigraphy with a proposal to formalize the Anthropocene in 2016. For the pur-pose of this book, we do not refer to an exact starting point of the Anthropocene, but merely acknowledge the fact that humans have an impact on virtually all global ecosystems and that wildlife species such as bats (order Chiroptera) have adjusted to these changes, experienced substantial population declines, or gone extinct boundary (c. 70 mya), the most rapid radiation of any mammalian order resulted in all 18 extant families by the end of the Eocene c. 37 mya (Teeling et al.2005). Moreover, although the majority of bat species are insectivorous, trophic diversity is extraordinary for a single order, with frugivores, nectarivores, piscivores, san-guinivores, and carnivores represented. Bats currently inhabit all continents except Antarctica, and in many parts of the world, especially the tropics, are the most species-rich mammalian group at a given locality, with alpha diversity reaching about 70 species in the Paleotropics (Kingston et al. 2010) and over 100 in the Neotropics (Voss and Emmons 1996; Rex et al. 2008). From any perspective, bats are an evolutionary and ecological success story. Nonetheless, bat populations are under severe threat in many regions of the world (Racey and Entwistle 2003). The last recorded case of a bat species driven to extinction is that of the Christmas Island pipistrelle, Pipistrellus murrayi (Lumsden and Schulz 2009; Lumsden 2009; Martin et al. 2012), yet this species is most likely not the last one to vanish from our planet.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

577 VOI b

Penerbit

Switzerland : Springer Nature., 2016

Deskripsi Fisik

601 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783319252209

Klasifikasi

577

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Ecology

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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