Date: January 9, 2017
Source: Stony Brook University
It will take at least eight
million years to restore species recently lost to extinction, according to
research on New World leaf-nosed bats by Stony Brook's Liliana Dávalos.
In the Caribbean alone, more than
half of the mammal species went extinct after human colonization. Bats are the
most diverse group of surviving mammals. Can nature restore the numbers of
species on islands to levels that existed before human arrival? How long would
it take for nature to regain this lost mammal diversity?
To answer these questions, a
research team led by Luis Valente at the Berlin Natural History Museum
(Germany) and Liliana Dávalos, Professor in the Department of Ecology and
Evolution of Stony Brook University, compiled data on the New World leaf-nosed
bats and their close relatives in a paper published in Nature Ecology and
Evolution. These bats form an ecologically diverse group that includes the
fishing bat, many fig-eating bats, and vampire bats. The group is ideal for
studying the effects of recent extinction, as one-third of its species have
become extinct in the Greater Antilles over the past 20,000 years.
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