Defaunation Maps for Tropical Mammals and Birds

Abstract

Motivation Overhunting is a major driver of defaunation in tropical ecosystems, yet its impacts and spatial extent remain challenging to quantify through conventional remote sensing approaches. Novel modelling frameworks based on quantitative relationships between impacts on wildlife populations and the main drivers of hunting pressure have provided a mean to identify hotspots of defaunation for avian and mammalian communities at a pantropical scale. However, the absence of spatially explicit predictions of hunting impacts at the species level hinders comprehensive assessments of biodiversity loss. Here, we present species‐specific defaunation raster maps for 4992 birds and mammals. Main Types of Variables Contained Raw abundance datasets reporting paired abundance estimates in hunted and unhunted areas, year and location of data collection, reference of the original study, taxonomic information, and predictor variables. Defaunation index maps in raster format at 1 km × 1 km resolution for 3680 species of birds and 1312 species of mammals. Spatial Location Pantropical. Time Period and Grain 1980–2025 for the abundance estimates, 2020 for the defaunation rasters. Major Taxa and Level of Measurement Tropical bird and mammal species. Software Format One dataset in csv format with raw abundance estimates from local studies, 4992 raster files in tif format with defaunation values per grid cell.

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