Mammals embody the apex of ecosystems processes, and their majestic diversity is overwhelmingly threatened in the Neotropical realm. Mammal population declines erode not only several levels of biological diversity, but may also impoverish critical ecosystem services (ES). Based on 2,427 putative baseline mammal assemblages derived from IUCN ranges polygons, we sought to understand, for the first time, the effects of mammal defaunation on natural ecosystem services throughout the entire Neotropical realm. At the assemblage-level, we simulated both stochastic and deterministic regimes of mammal defaunation, examining both diversity indices and classic metrics of ecological networks (e.g. modularity and nestedness). Our results show that ES losses are induced by declines in both taxonomic and functional diversity. Given any defaunation regime, Neotropical provinces undergo levels of ES erosion typically reaching less than a third of all potential network links. Geographic patterns of lost ecosystem services—resulting from simulated and real-world mammal extinctions—indicate that this will detrimentally affect human livelihoods across all major Neotropical provinces. We conclude that the ongoing defaunation process will promote irreversible failures of several mammal-mediated ecosystem processes at varying timescales.

哺乳动物体现了生态系统过程的最高点，其雄伟的多样性在新热带地区受到极大威胁。哺乳动物种群的减少不仅侵蚀了生物多样性的多个层次，而且还可能使关键的生态系统服务（ES）贫困化。基于来自IUCN范围多边形的2,427个假定的基线哺乳动物组合，我们试图首次了解整个世界在整个新热带地区，哺乳动物消亡对自然生态系统服务的影响。在组合级别，我们模拟了随机随机和确定性哺乳动物毁灭机制，研究了多样性指数和生态网络的经典指标（例如模块化和嵌套性）。我们的结果表明，ES损失是由分类和功能多样性的下降引起的。考虑到任何毁灭制度，新热带地区的ES侵蚀水平通常不到所有潜在网络链接的三分之一。由模拟和现实世界的哺乳动物灭绝导致的生态系统服务丧失的地理格局，表明这将对新热带各主要省份的人类生计产生不利影响。我们得出结论，正在进行的破坏过程将在不同的时间尺度上促进几种哺乳动物介导的生态系统过程的不可逆转的失败。