Modern human societies have negatively impacted native species richness and their adaptive capacity on every continent, in clearly contrasting ways. We propose a general model to explain how the sequence, duration, and type of colonising society alter native species richness patterns through changes in evolutionary pressures. These changes cause different ‘filtering effects’ on native species, while simultaneously altering the capacity of surviving species to adapt to further anthropogenic pressures. This framework may better explain the observed native species extinction rates and extirpation legacies following human colonisation events, as well as better predict future patterns of human impact on biodiversity.

Native biodiversity extinction. We obtained the date of non-human Anthropocene megafauna (mammal and avifauna weighing > 0.7 kg, based on Dirzo et al. 2014 ) considered as extinct or extirpated from four geographic regions, Africa (supplementary form Table 1), Europe (supplementary-form Table 2), North America (supplementary-form Table 3) and New Zealand (supplementary-form Table 4), from published information on IUCN (2015), New Zealand bird online (http://www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz), the sixth extinction (http://www.petermaas.nl) and in the primary literature (Kingdon 1997, Palumbo and Gallo-Orsi 1999, Reumer et al. 2003, Baillie et al. 2004, Fontaine et al. 2007; Bover and Alcover 2008, Jackson and Nowell 2011).

The pre-human native megafauna species richness for each geographical range was extracted from IUCN (2015). Species were included if they were either considered extinct or extirpated in the wild. Those species that were considered extirpated are those that are functionally extinct, such as species classified as extinct in the wild. The percentage of megafauna that went extinct for each time period was established based on the total population of megafauna during the pre-human period.