The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

perhaps as far as the mid-Miocene: Aradhna K. Tripati, Christopher D. Roberts, and Robert E.
Eagle, “Coupling of CO 2 and Ice Sheet Stability over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20
Million Years,” Science 326 (2009): 1394–97.
CHAPTER IX: ISLANDS ON DRY LAND
“fragmentologist”: Jeff Tollefson, “Splinters of the Amazon,” Nature 496 (2013): 286.
“the most important ecological experiment”: Ibid.
According to a recent study: Roger LeB. Hooke, José F. Martín-Duque, and Javier Pedraza,
“Land Transformation by Humans: A Review,” GSA Today 22 (2012): 4–10.
According to another recent study: Erle C. Ellis and Navin Ramankutty, “Putting People in
the Map: Anthropogenic Biomes of the World,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6 (2008):
439–47.
Across the reserves: Richard O. Bierregard et al., Lessons from Amazonia: The Ecology and
Conservation of a Fragmented Forest (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), 41.
On some land-bridge islands: Jared Diamond, “The Island Dilemma: Lessons of Modern
Biogeographic Studies for the Design of Natural Reserves,” Biological Conservation 7 (1975): 129–46.
the main predictor of local extinction: Jared Diamond, “’Normal’ Extinctions of Isolated
Populations,” in Extinctions, edited by Matthew H. Nitecki (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1984), 200.
Researchers at the BDFFP have found: Susan G. W. Laurance et al., “Effects of Road
Clearings on Movement Patterns of Understory Rainforest Birds in Central Amazonia,”
Conservation Biology 18 (2004) 1099–109.
“The jungle teems”: E. O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (1992; reprint, New York: Norton, 1993),
3–4.
There are butterflies that feed: Carl W. Rettenmeyer et al., “The Largest Animal Association
Centered on One Species: The Army Ant Eciton burchellii and Its More Than 300 Associates,” Insectes
Sociaux 58 (2011): 281–92.
A pair of American naturalists: Ibid.
Erwin estimated: Terry L. Erwin, “Tropical Forests: Their Richness in Coleoptera and Other
Arthropod Species,” Coleopterists Bulletin 36 (1982): 74–75.
recent estimates suggest: Andrew J. Hamilton et al., “Quantifying Uncertainty in Estimation
of Tropical Arthropod Species Richness,” American Naturalist 176 (2010): 90–95.
This exact calculation: E. O. Wilson, “Threats to Biodiversity,” Scientific American, September
1989, 108–16.
“Hardly a day passes”: John H. Lawton and Robert M. May, Extinction Rates (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995), v.
A recent report by the Zoological Society of London: “Spineless: Status and Trends of the
World’s Invertebrates,” published online July 31, 2012, 17.