Small Carnivores by Emmanuel Do Linh San (.ePUB)+
File Size: 53 MB
Small Carnivores: Evolution, Ecology, Behaviour and Conservation by Emmanuel Do Linh San, Jun J. Sato, Jerrold L. Belant, Michael J. Somers
Requirements: .PDF/.ePUB reader, 53 mb
Overview: This book focuses on the 232 species of the mammalian order Carnivora with an average body mass <21.5 kg. Small carnivores inhabit virtually all of the Earth’s ecosystems, adopting terrestrial, semi-fossorial, (semi-)arboreal or (semi-)aquatic lifestyles. They occupy multiple trophic levels and therefore play important roles in the regulation of ecosystems, such as natural pest control, seed dispersal and nutrient cycling. In areas where humans have extirpated large carnivores, small carnivores may become the dominant predators, which may increase their abundance (“mesopredator release”) to the point that they can sometimes destabilize communities, drive local extirpations and reduce overall biodiversity. On the other hand, one third of the world’s small carnivores are threatened or near threatened with extinction. This results from regionally burgeoning human populations’ industrial and agricultural activities, causing habitat reduction, destruction, fragmentation and pollution. Overexploitation, persecution and the impacts of introduced predators, competitors, and pathogens have also negatively affected many small carnivore species. Although small carnivores have been intensively studied over the past decades, bibliometric studies showed that they have not received the same attention given to large carnivores. Furthermore, there is huge disparity in how research efforts on small carnivores have been distributed, with some species intensively studied and others superficially or not at all.
This book aims at filling a gap in the scientific literature by elucidating the important roles of, and documenting the latest knowledge on, the world’s small carnivores.
Genre: Non-Fiction > Educational
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