CAN LIFE HISTORIES PREDICT THE EFFECTS OF HABITAT FRAGMENTATION? A META-ANALYSIS WITH TERRESTRIAL MAMMALS

Anthropogenic fragmentation of habitats has been identified as one of the primary drivers of mammalian declines and extinctions. Previous research has implicated five life history traits as being predictive of the impacts of habitat fragmentation on mammalian abundances: potential growth rate, sociality, mass, home range, and niche breadth. In order to systematically test if these five life histories correlated with mammalian abundances across a gradient of habitat fragmentation, we conducted a meta-analysis. We systematically collected data from 68 studies, encompassing 232 mammalian species within 143 genera, 50 families, and 17 orders. We found that mammals with lower growth rates, paternal care of offspring, greater mass, larger home ranges, and increased niche specialization had significantly lower abundances in fragmented habitat. These results could provide land managers and conservationists with a coarse tool for predicting the impacts of habitat fragmentation across a wide taxonomic breadth of terrestrial mammals.