ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Historical data as a baseline for conservation: reconstructing long-term faunal extinction dynamics in Late Imperial-modern China.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed.
- Utilizing large language models to construct a dataset of Württemberg's 19th-century fauna from historical records.PloS one · 2026Article
- New Perspectives on European Wildcat (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Morphometric characterization of Holocene mandibles expands the ecological baseline for understanding gibbon extinction dynamics.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Bending the curve of biodiversity loss requires a 'satnav' for nature.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Detecting Range Shrinking From Historical Amphibian Species Occurrences Under Influence of Human Impacts: A Case Study Using the Chinese Giant Salamander,Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Assessing the information-content of messy data to reconstruct population recovery dynamics for the world's rarest primate.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Identification of potential suitable areas and conservation priority areas for representative wild animals in the Greater and Lesser Khingan Mountains.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Coupled social and ecological change drove the historical extinction of the California grizzly bear (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Is Yuan in China's Three Gorges a Gibbon or a Langur?International journal of primatology · 2022Article
- Where the wild things were: intrinsic and extrinsic extinction predictors in the world's most depleted mammal fauna.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Macaques in China: Evolutionary dispersion and subsequent development.American journal of primatology · 2020Article
- The effective use of camera traps to document the northernmost distribution of the western black crested gibbon in China.Primates; journal of primatology · 2020Article
- Steep topography buffers threatened gymnosperm species against anthropogenic pressures in China.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Long-term effects of cultural filtering on megafauna species distributions across China.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Anthropocene refugia: integrating history and predictive modelling to assess the space available for biodiversity in a human-dominated world.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Insights from the past: unique opportunity or foreign country?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Shifted distribution baselines: neglecting long-term biodiversity records risks overlooking potentially suitable habitat for conservation management.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Complementarity, completeness and quality of long-term faunal archives in an Asian biodiversity hotspot.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Using historical and palaeoecological data to inform ambitious species recovery targets.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Historical records reveal the distinctive associations of human disturbance and extreme climate change with local extinction of mammals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
Extinction events typically represent extended processes of decline that cannot be reconstructed using short-term studies. Long-term archives are necessary to determine past baselines and the extent of human-caused biodiversity change, but the capacity of historical datasets to provide predictive power for conservation must be assessed within a robust analytical framework. Local Chinese gazetteers represent a more than 400-year country-level dataset containing abundant information on past environmental conditions and include extensive records of gibbons, which have a restricted present-day distribution but formerly occurred across much of China. Gibbons show pre-twentieth century range contraction, with significant fragmentation by the mid-eighteenth century and population loss escalating in the late nineteenth century. Isolated gibbon populations persisted for about 40 years before local extinction. Populations persisted for longer at higher elevations, and disappeared earlier from northern and eastern regions, with the biogeography of population loss consistent with the contagion model of range collapse in response to human demographic expansion spreading directionally across China. The long-term Chinese historical record can track extinction events and human interactions with the environment across much longer timescales than are usually addressed in ecology, contributing novel baselines for conservation and an increased understanding of extinction dynamics and species vulnerability or resilience to human pressures.
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