I’ve spent past few months looking into how human land use is affecting the tree of life (hence the lack of posts…), so I thought I’d do a brief post about what I found.
I used two bits of freely available online data; the PREDICTS database, a huge database containing over three million species records, and TimeTree, a large open access evolutionary tree.
Previous studies have shown human land use causes decline in the amount of evolutionary history in animals such as bees, birds and frogs. However, to date no one has done a global study across all animals with a backbone.
I found that human land use is significantly pruning the vertebrate tree of life all across the globe, with the longest, oldest branches being disproportionately lost. It is thought this will impact how natural systems function, but more research is needed in this area, especially in the looming face of climate change.
