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The use of species' traits in macroecological analyses has gained popularity in the last decade, becoming an important tool to understand global biodiversity patterns. Currently, trait data can be found across a wide variety of data sets included in websites, articles, and books, each one with its own taxonomic classification, set of traits, and data management methodology. Mammals, in particular, are among the most studied taxa, with large sources of trait information readily available. To facilitate the use of these data, we did an extensive review of published mammal trait data sources between 1999 and May 2020 and produced COMBINE: a COalesced Mammal dataBase of INtrinsic and Extrinsic traits. Our aim was to create a taxonomically integrated database of mammal traits that maximized trait number and coverage without compromising data quality. COMBINE contains information on 54 traits for 6,234 extant and recently extinct mammal species, including information on morphology, reproduction, diet, biogeography, life habit, phenology, behavior, home range, and density. Additionally, we calculated other relevant traits such as habitat and altitudinal breadths for all species and dispersal for terrestrial non-volant species. All data are compatible with the taxonomies of the IUCN Red List v. 2020-2 and PHYLACINE v. 1.2. Missing data were adequately flagged and imputed for non-biogeographical traits with 20% or more data available. We obtained full data sets for 21 traits such as female maturity, litter size, maximum longevity, trophic level, and dispersal, providing imputation performance statistics for all. This data set will be especially useful for those interested in including species' traits in large-scale ecological and conservation analyses. There are no copyright or proprietary restrictions; we request citation of this publication and all relevant underlying data sources (found in Data S1: trait_data_sources.csv), upon using these data., (© The Authors. Ecology © 2021 The Ecological Society of America.)

Understanding changes in species distributions is essential to disentangle the mechanisms that drive their responses to anthropogenic habitat modification. Here we analyse the past (1970s) and current (2017) distribution of 204 species of terrestrial non-volant mammals to identify drivers of recent contraction and expansion in their range. We find 106 species lost part of their past range, and 40 of them declined by >50%. The key correlates of this contraction are large body mass, increase in air temperature, loss of natural land, and high human population density. At the same time, 44 species have some expansion in their range, which correlates with small body size, generalist diet, and high reproductive rates. Our findings clearly show that human activity and life history interact to influence range changes in mammals. While the former plays a major role in determining contraction in species' distribution, the latter is important for both contraction and expansion.

As rates of global warming increase rapidly, identifying species at risk of decline due to climate impacts and the factors affecting this risk have become key challenges in ecology and conservation biology. Here, we present a framework for assessing three components of climate-related risk for species: vulnerability, exposure and hazard. We used the relationship between the observed response of species to climate change and a set of intrinsic traits (e.g. weaning age) and extrinsic factors (e.g. precipitation seasonality within a species geographic range) to predict, respectively, the vulnerability and exposure of all data-sufficient terrestrial non-volant mammals (3,953 species). Combining this information with hazard (the magnitude of projected climate change within a species geographic range), we identified global hotspots of species at risk from climate change that includes the western Amazon basin, south-western Kenya, north-eastern Tanzania, north-eastern South Africa, Yunnan province in China, and mountain chains in Papua-New Guinea. Our framework identifies priority areas for monitoring climate change effects on species and directing climate mitigation actions for biodiversity., (© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The global decline of terrestrial species is largely due to the degradation, loss and fragmentation of their habitats. The conversion of natural ecosystems for cropland, rangeland, forest products and human infrastructure are the primary causes of habitat deterioration. Due to the paucity of data on the past distribution of species and the scarcity of fine‐scale habitat conversion maps, however, accurate assessment of the recent effects of habitat degradation, loss and fragmentation on the range of mammals has been near impossible. We aim to assess the proportions of available habitat within the lost and retained parts of mammals' distribution ranges, and to identify the drivers of habitat availability. We produced distribution maps for 475 terrestrial mammals for the range they occupied 50 years ago and compared them to current range maps. We then calculated the differences in the percentage of 'area of habitat' (habitat available to a species within its range) between the lost and retained range areas. Finally, we ran generalized linear mixed models to identify which variables were more influential in determining habitat availability in the lost and retained parts of the distribution ranges. We found that 59% of species had a lower proportion of available habitat in the lost range compared to the retained range, thus hypothesizing that habitat loss could have contributed to range declines. The most important factors negatively affecting habitat availability were the conversion of land to rangeland and high density of livestock. Significant intrinsic traits were those related to reproductive timing and output, habitat breadth and medium body size. Our findings emphasize the importance of implementing conservation strategies to mitigate the impacts caused by human activities on the habitats of mammals, and offer evidence indicating which species have the potential to reoccupy portions of their former range if other threats cease to occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The breadth of a species' climatic niche is an important ecological trait that allows adaptation to climate change, but human activities often reduce realised niche breadth by impacting species distributions. Some life‐history traits, such as dispersal ability and reproductive speed, allow species to cope with both human impact and climate change. But how do these traits interact with human pressure to determine niche change? Here we investigate the patterns and drivers of change in the realised climatic niche of 258 terrestrial mammal species. Our goal is to disentangle the impacts of human land use, climate change and life history. We quantified the past and present climatic niches of each species by considering past climatic conditions (Mid Holocene) within their pre‐human impact distributions, and current climatic conditions within the current distributions. Depending on the difference between past and current niche, we defined four categories of change: 'shrink', 'shift', 'stable' and 'expand'. We found over half of the species in our sample have undergone niche shrink, while only one in six retained a stable niche. Climate change and distribution change were the strongest correlates of species niche change, followed by biogeography, anthropogenic land use and life‐history traits. Factors that increased the probability of niche shrink included: overall climatic instability, reduction in distribution range, historical land use, large body mass and long weaning age. Species with these characteristics might require interventions that facilitate natural dispersal or assisted colonisation to survive rapidly changing climates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ongoing perturbations in the global climate have triggered changes in the frequency or magnitude of extreme climatic events, including drought. Increasingly common or intense droughts have threatened ungulates. Intensifying trend of drought has been observed in China since the 1980s. We assessed drought vulnerability of 60 ungulate taxa distributed in China by synthesizing information on drought exposure and intrinsic vulnerability related to biological traits. In total, 27 taxa were identified as vulnerable to drought, which represent over half of the taxa assessed as threatened in the IUCN Red List and China's National Red List. We identified hotspots where a high number of drought‐vulnerable taxa are concentrated, including Northeast Himalayan subalpine conifer forests, alpine conifer and mixed forests of Nujiang‐Lancang Gorge, and Qionglai‐Minshan conifer forests, which are all located in Southwest China. We also assessed conservation efforts that China has allocated to ungulate taxa vulnerable to drought. Drought‐vulnerable taxa that are endemic to China have significantly lower coverage in China's National Nature Reserve system compared with nonvulnerable taxa. These findings reveal the gaps in existing conservation efforts and indicate possible improvements that might be needed to maintain species resistance in the face of increasing and intensifying drought impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]