defaunation
Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- noun The loss of animals from a habitat.
Examples
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My idea was to convey to the public that just as we talk about deforestation-a term that everybody understands and has a mental image of the meaning-to use an equivalent term, defaunation, to convey that there's more than what we see with satellite imagery showing forest cover.
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The reason why I came up with that conclusion now has become a very important aspect in my line of research: many tropical forests lack evidence of mammalian herbivory due too that what I call defaunation-the loss of the fauna.
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More subtly, "defaunation" has ecological ramifications, including disrupting the natural balance of wildlife populations and potentially impacting ecosystem dynamics through the removal of key pollinators, seed predators, and dispersers.
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He ranks defaunation - as he terms the ongoing biological impoverishment of forests - as one of the world's most significant global changes, on par with environmental changes like global warming, deforestation, and shifts in the nitrogen cycle.
Note
The word 'defaunation' is formed from 'de-' + 'fauna' + 'tion'.
