Hughes, L.J. orcid.org/0000-0001-8490-3626, Morton, O., Scheffers, B.R. et al. (1 more author) (2023) The ecological drivers and consequences of wildlife trade. Biological Reviews, 98 (3). pp. 775-791. ISSN 1464-7931
Abstract
Wildlife trade is a key driver of extinction risk, affecting at least 24% of terrestrial vertebrates. The persistent removal of species can have profound impacts on species extinction risk and selection within populations. We draw together the first review of characteristics known to drive species use - identifying species with larger body sizes, greater abundance, increased rarity or certain morphological traits valued by consumers as being particularly prevalent in trade. We then review the ecological implications of this trade-driven selection, revealing direct effects of trade on natural selection and populations for traded species, which includes selection against desirable traits. Additionally, there exists a positive feedback loop between rarity and trade and depleted populations tend to have easy human access points, which can result in species being harvested to extinction and has the potential to alter source-sink dynamics. Wider cascading ecosystem repercussions from trade-induced declines include altered seed dispersal networks, trophic cascades, long-term compositional changes in plant communities, altered forest carbon stocks, and the introduction of harmful invasive species. Because it occurs across multiple scales with diverse drivers, wildlife trade requires multi-faceted conservation actions to maintain biodiversity and ecological function, including regulatory and enforcement approaches, bottom-up and community-based interventions, captive breeding or wildlife farming, and conservation translocations and trophic rewilding. We highlight three emergent research themes at the intersection of trade and community ecology: (1) functional impacts of trade; (2) altered provisioning of ecosystem services; and (3) prevalence of trade-dispersed diseases. Outside of the primary objective that exploitation is sustainable for traded species, we must urgently incorporate consideration of the broader consequences for other species and ecosystem processes when quantifying sustainability.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Authors. Biological Reviews published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Cambridge Philosophical Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). |
Keywords: | biodiversity conservation; ecosystem function; ecosystem services; trafficking; trophic cascades; wildlife trade |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) > Department of Biomedical Science (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 09 Jan 2023 15:50 |
Last Modified: | 26 Sep 2024 14:46 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/brv.12929 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:195026 |
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