Biodiversity, paleozoology, and conservation biology

Abstract

A major concern in modern conservation biology is the loss of biodiversity. Such loss has, however, been common throughout the history of life. The source of the modern concern is that biodiversity loss is thought to be exacerbated by anthropogenic (human) causes in general, a top-down ecological process. But contrary to the ecologically noble savage notion, today is not different in kind from the past. Humans have depleted and extirpated populations and species for thousands of years. Climate change has also reduced biodiversity throughout history, such as when primary productivity is reduced by increased aridity in a bottom-up ecological process. The paleozoological record provides examples of normal background fluctuation in biodiversity and indicates bottom-up processes have been commonplace and top-down (particularly anthropogenic) causes can be distinguished from them in zooarchaeological collections. Both the loss and gain of species and of morphological variants can be tracked in the paleozoological record. Given that instances of biodiversity decrease on many continents at the end of the Pleistocene were coincident with climatic warming, the threat to modern biodiversity of modern global warming driven by anthropogenic processes is quite real.