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Researchers from Stanford University who examined fossils excavated from a cave in Northern California, discovered a 30% reduction in small mammal biodiversity during the last period of global warming, around 12,000 years ago.

Deposits in Samwell Cave in the foothills of the southern Cascades showed that populations of both gophers and voles during the end of the Pleistocene epoch were on a par with those of deer mice. However, the deer mice population thrived during the global warming period, but the populations of gophers, voles, and other species of small mammals DECREASED PERMANENTLY. Deer mice are considered to be a “weed” species in ecosystems, and when they replace other species, the effects ripple throughout the ecosystem. Small mammals never became EXTINCT during the Pleistocene, unlike some larger mammals like mammoths, mastodons, and dire wolves.

Jessica Blois, the lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature, said that although it is easy to take small mammals for granted, they play important roles “in soil aeration and seed dispersal and as prey for larger animals.” She also said that:

“Even though all of the species survived, small mammal communities as a whole lost a substantial amount of diversity, which may make them less resilient to future change.”

Co-author and professor of biology at Stanford University, Elizabeth Hadly, said that:

“The temperature change over the next hundred years is expected to be greater than the temperature that most of the mammals that are on the landscape have yet witnessed as a species.”

“The small-mammal community that we have is really resilient, but it is headed toward a perturbation that is bigger than anything it has seen in the last million years.”

The loss of biodiversity is rising at an unprecedented rate, according to the U.N.’s Global Biodiversity Outlook third edition ( GBO-3), and governments were urged to take immediate action to avoid “catastrophic tipping points.”

For more information on action underway to prevent the extinction crisis and restore Earth’s ecosystems, see the CNN article.

-Bill at

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