Article in press - uncorrected proof Mammalia 73 (2009): 169–202 ᮊ 2009 by Walter de Gruyter • Berlin • New York. DOI 10.1515/MAMM.2009.029 Review Mammals of the Mediterranean islands: homogenisation and the loss of biodiversity Marco Masseti ical and archaeozoological evidence demonstrates that several of the fossil and subfossil island faunas differed Dipartimento di Biologia Evoluzionistica ‘‘Leo Pardi’’ considerably from contemporary continental faunas, and dell’Universita` di Firenze, Laboratori di Antropologia ed were characterised by a very low taxonomic diversity Etnologia, Via del Proconsolo, 12 – 50122 Firenze, Italy, (Azzaroli 1971, 1977, Sondaar 1971, 1977). The great e-mail:
[email protected] number of islands in the Mediterranean made this region highly favourable to the evolution of island endemics (Sondaar and Boekschoten 1967, Dermitzakis and Son- Abstract daar 1978, Kotsakis et al. 1980, Sondaar et al. 1986, Marra 2005). Examples from the Balearics, Corsica and There is possibly no other location in the world which has Sardinia, the Tuscan archipelago, Capri, Sicily, Malta, been so intensively influenced by human activity over a Crete, many Aegean islands, and Cyprus are significant prolonged period as the Mediterranean. Virtually no eco- (Azzaroli 1971, 1977, Sondaar 1971, 1977, Vigne 1992, systems have been left untouched. Since prehistory, the Masseti and Mazza 1996) (Figure 1). From a biogeo- human settlers of the Mediterranean islands brought graphical point of view, all these insular territories have about a radical turnover between ancient and modern to be regarded as ‘‘oceanic islands’’ (cf. Wallace 1876, mammalian faunas, introducing a variety of allochtho- Ghigi 1950, Dermitzakis and Theodorou 1994).