Body mass and extinction risk in Australian marsupials: The ‘Critical Weight Range’ revisited

By Christopher N. Johnson, J. Isaac. 2009

187 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Australian mammals have suffered an exceptionally high rate of decline and extinction over the last two hundred years. Body mass is linked to extinction risk in Australian mammals, but the nature of this association is controversial. A widely held view is that species of intermediate body mass (between 35 and 5500 g, the 'critical weight range', CWR) have declined most severely. However, the existence of the CWR has been disputed. In this paper we clarify the relationship of decline status and body mass in Australian marsupials. We show that the form of this relationship differs for ground-living versus arboreal species, and for species from low versus high rainfall areas. Among ground-living species and those from low-rainfall areas, declines were strongly size-selective and concentrated on species within the CWR. For the remaining species, decline was only weakly related to body mass with no evidence of heightened risk for species of intermediate size. We conclude that for terrestrial species in low rainfall areas, species within the CWR are most at risk of decline and extinction.

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Paleontology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c85af65aead59ec7fd6187ccf437d23c24b1930a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Paleontology

Citations in the corpus

Rabbits: manageable environmental pests or participants in new Australian ecosystems? (2012, background): “Johnson and Isaac (2009) recently re-emphasised that the loss of mammalian species within this weight range was greatest in semiarid and arid regionswherehigh climatic variability results in high rabbit impact.”
Is the loss of Australian digging mammals contributing to a deterioration in ecosystem function (2014, background): “Marsupials with body weights between 100 g and 5 kg (CWR) are considered most at risk from fox predation, particularly if they are ground-dwelling, nonarboreal species in low-rainfall areas (Burbidge & McKenzie 1989, McKenzie et al. 2007, Johnson & Isaac 2009).”
Ongoing unraveling of a continental fauna: Decline and extinction of Australian mammals since European settlement (2015, background): “The characteristics of increased extinction risk for Australian terrestrial mammals are consistent with an explanation for decline based on predation by feral cats and foxes: the lost species are meal-sized for, and accessible to, these introduced predators (43, 66, 67, 69).”