Fauna
- For other uses of the term, see fauna (disambiguation).
Fauna is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.
Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna".
Paleontologists sometimes refer to a sequence of faunal stages, which is a series of rocks all containing similar fossils.
The name comes from Fauna, a Roman fertility and earth goddess, the Roman god Faunus, and the related forest spirits called Fauns. All three words are cognates of the name of the Greek god Pan, and panis is the Greek equivalent of fauna. Fauna is also the word for a book that catalogues the animals in such a manner. The term was first used by Linnaeus in the title of his 1747 work Fauna Suecica.
Subdivisions of fauna
Epifauna
Epifauna are animals that live upon the surface of sediments or soils.
Infauna
Infauna are aquatic animals that live within the bottom substratum rather than on its surface. Bacteria and microalgae may also live in the interstices of bottom sediments. On average, infaunal animals become progressively rarer with increasing water depth and distance from shore, whereas bacteria show more constancy in abundance, tending toward one billion cells per milliliter of interstitial seawater. (Infauna are benthos that live buried in underwater mud.)
Macrofauna
Macrofauna are benthic or soil organisms which are at least one millimeter in length.
Megafauna
Megafauna are species of large animals (Greek μεγας, large, + modern Latin fauna, animal).
Definitions of what constitutes 'large' vary, with some authors using a 40 kg minimum,[1] others 44 kg,[2][3] 45 kg,[4] 100 kg,[5] or 250 kg.[6] In the last case, they may be further subdivided into small (250–500 kg), medium (500–1,000 kg) and large (over 1,000 kg) megafauna.[6] Others say that any particular limit is arbitrary, and do not favour a single minimum weight.[7]
The term is also used to refer to particular groups of large animals, both to extant species and, more often, those that have become extinct in the geologically recent Quaternary period.
Megafauna animals are generally K-strategists, with great longevity, slow population growth rates, low death rates, and few or no natural predators capable of killing adults. These characteristics make megafauna highly vulnerable to human exploitation. Some authors have argued that this reproductive capacity and ecological behaviour are more important than size alone, with some much smaller animals with very low reproductive rates showing 'megafauna' characteristics, such as all Tachyglossidae (echidnas) and Megatherioidea (two-toed sloths) above 7 kg and 6 kg respectively, having become extinct in late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions.[8]
Recent extinctions
Many species of megafauna have become extinct within the last million years, and, although some biologists dispute it, human hunting is often cited as the cause.[9] Other theories for the cause of the extinctions are climatic change associated with glaciation and the questionable hyperdisease hypothesis.[10]
Examples of megafauna
Domestic megafauna
- Alpaca (Vicugna pacos)
- Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus)
- Chital (Axis axis)
- Domestic buffalo (Bubalus bubalis)
- Domestic Dog (Canis familaris)
- Donkey (Equus asinus)
- Dromedary Camel (Camelus dromedarius)
- Guanaco (Lama guanicoe)
- Cattle (Bos taurus)
- Horse (Equus domesticus)
- Pig (Sus scrofa)
- Llama (Lama glama)
- Sheep (Ovis aries)
- Turkey (Melagris gallopavo)
- Vicuña (Vicugna vicugna)
Freshwater megafauna
- Chinook Salmon (Oncohynchus tshawtscha)
- Giant Barb (Catlocarpio siamensis)
- Wels Catfish (Silurus glanis)
- Prionosuchus †
Oceanian megafauna
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Megafauna are large animals of any particular region or time. For example, Australian megafauna.
Meiofauna
Meiofauna are small benthic invertebrates that live in both marine and fresh water environments. The term Meiofauna loosely defines a group of organisms by their size, larger than microfauna but smaller than macrofauna, rather than a taxonomic grouping. In practice these are organisms that can pass through a 1 mm mesh but will be retained by a 45 μm mesh, but the exact dimensions will vary from researcher to researcher. Whether an organism will pass through a 1 mm mesh will also depend upon whether it is alive or dead at the time of sorting.
Mesofauna
Mesofauna are macroscopic soil invertebrates such as arthropods, earthworms, and nematodes.
Microfauna
Microfauna are microscopic or very small animals (usually including protozoans and very small animals such as rotifers).
Africa Microfauna
- Anderson's Gerbil
- Red-billed Quelea
- Red-billed Oxpecker
Australia Microfauna
- Australian Swamp Rat
- Gould's Mouse
- Tasmanian Devil
South and Central America Microfauna
- Toco Toucan
- Pygmy Marmoset
- Blue-backed Manakin
- Scarlet Macaw
Eurasia Microfauna
- European Red Squirrel
- Japanese Squirrel
- White-crested Laughingthrush
North American Microfauna
- American Crow
- American Red Squirrel
- Eastern Chipmunk
- Spotted Skunk
- Carolina Parkeet †
- Cardinal
- Blue Jay
- Gray Squirrel
- Pileated Woodpecker
- Striped Skunk
Island Microfauna
- Aye-Aye
- Blue Tang
- Clown Triggerfish
- Flying Fish
- Hermit crab
- Kakapo
- Ring-tailed Lemur
- Three species of puffins
Ocean Microfauna
- Edible Crab
- Hermit Crab
- Herring Gull
- Plankton
- Zooplankton
Arctic Microfauna
- Arctic Hare
- Lemming
Around the World Microfauna
- Barn Swallow
- House Mouse
- Domestic Cat
- Domestic rabbit
- Hamster
Other
Other terms include avifauna, which means "bird fauna" and piscifauna (or ichthyofauna), which means "fish fauna".
Fauna treatises
Classic faunas
- Linnaeus, Carolus. Fauna Suecica. 1746
See also
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| Fauna of South America | |
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| Sovereign states | Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil · Chile · Colombia · Ecuador · Guyana · Panama* · Paraguay · Peru · Suriname · Trinidad and Tobago* · Uruguay · Venezuela |
| Dependencies | Aruba* (Netherlands) · Falkland Islands (UK) · French Guiana (France) · Netherlands Antilles* (Netherlands) · South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (UK) |
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- ↑ Defense of the Earth. Past consequences of climate change: Evolutionary history of the mammals.
- ↑ Stuart, A. J. (1991). Mammalian extinctions in the Late Pleistocene of northern Eurasia and North America. Biol. Rev. 66: 453–562.
- ↑ Anon. Quaternary Paleobiology Update. The Quaternary Times 29 (1): (1999).
- ↑ Corlett, R. T. (2006). Megafaunal extinctions in tropical Asia. Tropinet 17 (3): 1–3.
- ↑ Martin, P. S. & Steadman, D. W. (1999). Prehistoric extinctions on islands and continents. In: Extinctions in near time: causes, contexts and consequences (MacPhee, R. D. E., ed.), pp. 17–56. New York: Kluwer/Plenum.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Choquenot, D., & Bowman, D. M. J. S. (1998). Marsupial Megafauna, Aborigines and the Overkill Hypothesis: Application of Predator-Prey Models to the Question of Pleistocene Extinction in Australia. Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters 7 (3): 167-180.
- ↑ Wroe, S., Field, J., Fullagar, R., & Jermiin, L. S. (2004). Megafaunal extinction in the late Quaternary and the global overkill hypothesis. Alcheringa 28: 291-331.
- ↑ Johnson, C. N. (2002). Determinants of loss of mammal species during the Late Quaternary 'megafauna' extinctions: life history and ecology, but not body size. Proc. Biol. Sci. 269 (1506): 2221–2227.
- ↑ Diamond, J. (1997). Guns, Germs and Steel. Vintage ISBN 0-09-930278-0.
- ↑ Grayson, D. K., & Meltzer, D. J. (2003). A requiem for North American overkill. Journal of Archaeological Science 30: 585–593.
