“Empty forests” in which humans have driven large vertebrate species to extinction lack
myriad direct and indirect species interactions. This may alter key ecosystem processes …

Declines of large vertebrates in tropical forests may reduce dispersal of tree species that rely
on them, and the resulting undispersed seedlings might suffer increased distance‐and …

One of the most intriguing questions in ecology is how to identify which and how many
species will be able to inhabit human-modified landscapes. Large-bodied mammals …

Hunting has reduced or eliminated large-bodied vertebrates in many areas across the
tropics, contributing to the global process of defaunation. Elucidating the ecological …

It has been suggested that tropical defaunation may unleash community-wide cascading
effects, leading to reductions in plant diversity. However, experimental evidence establishing …

Using a decade-long exclosure experiment in Panama, we tested the hypothesis that
ground-dwelling vertebrate herbivores and seed predators are crucial determinants of …

Defaunation, driven by hunting and habitat fragmentation, poses a threat to wildlife in
tropical forests worldwide and is expected to have cascading effects on other organisms …

Human activities have altered the abundance and distribution of animals, reshaping
ecosystems into novel and generally more depauperate configurations. Whereas …

Large animal species, which provide important ecological functions such as dispersal of
seeds or top–down control of seed predators, are very vulnerable in fragmented forests …

Hunting and habitat loss represent an increasingly common anthropogenic impact.
Available evidence suggests that defaunation is typically differential: medium/large …