Late Quaternary changes in bat palaeobiodiversity and palaeobiogeography under climatic and anthropogenic pressure: new insights from Marie-Galante, Lesser Antilles

A new fossil species ofBoaLinnaeus, 1758 (Squamata, Boidae), from the Pleistocene of Marie-Galante Island (French West Indies)

“…observ.). At the end of the Pleistocene, Marie-Galante Island was 71% larger than it is now and supported much drier vegetation (Stoetzel et al, 2016;Royer et al, 2017). The island became smaller and wetter during the Holocene as a consequence of the climatic modifications occurring during this period.…”

“…The size of insular snakes is known to be strongly influenced by the size of available prey (Boback, 2003;Boback et al, 2003;Keogh et al, 2005;Tanaka, 2011), and the dwarf status of the Marie-Galante specimens could be easily explained by the lack of large terrestrial prey, as indicated by the Marie-Galante fossil record (Stouvenot et al, 2014;Bailon et al, 2015;Bochaton et al, 2015b;Stoetzel et al, 2016). Consequently, although this could not be unambiguously demonstrated, it is likely that Boa blanchardensis, sp.…”

“…The island became smaller and wetter during the Holocene as a consequence of the climatic modifications occurring during this period. This led to a turnover and a depletion of the Marie-Galante bat biodiversity (Stoetzel et al, 2016) but had no apparent effect on terrestrial vertebrates (Bochaton et al, 2015b(Bochaton et al, , 2017b, with the exception of Boa blanchardensis, sp. nov.…”

“…The studied fossil material includes 297 boid snake remains collected from Cadet 2 cave (16 specimens) (Bochaton et al, 2015b), Cadet 3 rock shelter (four specimens) (Sierpe, 2011;Stouvenot et al, 2014), and Blanchard Cave (277 specimens) (Bailon et al, 2015;Stoetzel et al, 2016) on Marie-Galante Island (Fig. 1).…”

Assesssing the role of humans in Greater Antillean land vertebrate extinctions: new insights from Cuba

“…the Caribbean are often attributed to natural phenomena (e.g. global climate change) and human 7 effects, such as hunting, habitat alterations, and the introduction of exotic species (Morgan and 8 Woods, 1986;Stoetzel et al, 2016;Borroto-Páez and Mancina, 2017). Globally, most island 9 extinctions seem to coincide or follow the arrival of humans, although the magnitude and overlap 10 of these events seem to vary depending on island size, human cultures, and the characteristics of The role of humans on Caribbean vertebrate extinctions, especially mammals and birds, 19 has been debated for nearly four decades (e.g.…”