Loss of reptiles poses threat for small islands where humans may have caused extinctions utaustin PNASNews
. Instead, the study maps out the functions that those species offer that support a thriving natural environment. The 418 species can be collapsed into 123 functional entities: groupings of species that share the same suite of traits and may perform similar ecosystem services.
For example, when the giant tortoises of the Caribbean were hunted to extinction, the island region lost not only the tortoises but a core service the reptiles provided. Giant tortoises are important vehicles to spread plant seeds. That function was lost in the Caribbean, and the situation was made worse by the extinction of other large-bodied herbivores such as sloths, leading to certain plants having limited dispersal agents and restricted ranges.
However, the opposite was true when green iguanas were introduced to islands that had lost reptile-related functional diversity. The green iguana filled the gaps. In fact, the species helped return functional diversity to prehistoric levels in some cases. Kemp found that smaller islands, in particular, lack the buffer that larger islands have when they lose a set of reptile species that help to keep an ecosystem intact to an event like the introduction of the mongoose. For example, the largest islands, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, retain 80%-98% of their native functional entities.
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