Rodent Biodiversity in Changing Environments

Abstract

Organisms adapt and evolve in response to environmental changes. Current changes in the environment occur at a rate and scale that are closer to those of mass extinction rather than of normal, background extinction. The response of species to global changes will depend on their ability to disperse and to acclimatize, as well as on their evolvability. The current view is that the high rate of current environmental changes impedes the evolutionary processes of adaptation to new conditions. Rodents, however, show a high potential to successfully adapt to changing environments over various time scales, including very rapid responses thanks to various characteristics of their life history, traits and plasticity. This paper briefly reviews the processes that allow rodents to respond to the challenges of changing environments, from the instantaneous plastic response to the paleontological perspective of long term evolution. Rodents indeed include very opportunistic and highly evolvable species, which may successfully overcome the ongoing changes, although some specialist species will inevitably be the victim of the adjustment of the communities to the human-driven modification of their environments.