A Continental-Wide Decline of Occupancy and Diversity in Five Charismatic Neotropical Carnivores

Abstract

The Neotropics are a global biodiversity hotspot that has undergone dramatic land use changes over the last decades. However, a temporal perspective on the continental-wide distributions of species in this region is still missing. To unveil it, we model the entire area of occupancy of five Neotropical carnivore species at two time periods (2000-2013 and 2014-2021) using integrated species distribution models (ISDMs) in a Bayesian framework. The carnivores are the jaguarundi (Herpailurus yagouaroundi), margay (Leopardus wiedii), maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), tayra (Eira barbara), and giant otter (Pteronura brasiliensis). We mapped the temporal change, the areas where gains and losses accumulated for all species (hotspots of change) and calculated the spatial and temporal dissimilarity. We show that most carnivore species have declined their area of occupancy in the last two decades, that diversity has decreased over time, and that species composition has diverged (i.e., dissimilarity among assemblages increased). By looking at different facets of biodiversity simultaneously, we revealed that the ongoing changes in land use in the Neotropical region have been coupled with a transformation in the status of biodiversity there.

Keywords: biodiversity change, geographic range, dynamic patterns, hotspots of change, integrated species distribution models, Bayesian