Connectivity among ecosystems is necessary to sustain ecological processes that promote biodiversity, community stability and ecosystem resilience, such as organism and nutrient dispersal. Along with human land use and habitat fragmentation, connectivity can also be affected by faunal changes. Here, we address this issue by studying how human‐driven late Quaternary extinctions and extirpations of terrestrial mammals have affected the movement capacity of assemblages, an estimate of the potential connectivity among ecosystems promoted by wildlife.

中文翻译：

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巨型动物的灭绝降低了全球的生物连通性

生态系统之间的连通性对于维持促进生物多样性，社区稳定和生态系统复原力（例如生物体和养分传播）的生态过程是必要的。除人类土地利用和栖息地破碎化之外，动物群的变化也会影响连通性。在这里，我们通过研究人类驱动的第四纪晚期灭绝和陆地哺乳动物的灭绝如何影响种群的移动能力来解决这个问题，这是对野生动植物所促进的生态系统之间潜在连通性的估计。