title: Increased human occupation and agricultural development accelerates the population contraction of an estuarine delphinid.
abstract: Over the past few thousand years, human development and population expansion in southern China have led to local extirpation and population contraction of many terrestrial animals. At what extent this early human-induced environmental change has also affected coastal marine species remains poorly known. We investigated the demographic history of the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (Sousa chinensis) in the Pearl River Delta (PRD); an obligatory inshore species known for its susceptibility to anthropogenic impacts in one of China's most developed coastal regions. Although the deltaic evolution of PRD has been influenced by climate since the Holocene, ~74% reduction of the dolphin's effective population size occurred within the last 2000 years, consistent with ~61% habitat contraction during this period. This considerable and recent population contraction may have been due to land use practices and deforestation in the upper/middle Pearl River region, all leading to increasing sedimentation rate in the estuarine area. As anthropogenic impacts within the drainage of Pearl River affected a vast area, coastal dolphins and large terrestrial mammals in southern China may share a similar demographic history, whilst the demographic and biogeographic history of the PRD humpback dolphins may be symptomatic of similar processes that this species may have undergone elsewhere in the region.
authors.affiliation: South China Sea Bio-Resource Exploitation and Utilization Collaborative Innovation Center; Zhuhai Key Laboratory of Marine Bioresources and Environment, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Coastal Engineering, School of Marine Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, PR China.|The Swire Institute of Marine Science and School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Cape d'Aguilar, Shek O, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Wenzhi
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: The Swire Institute of Marine Science and School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Cape d'Aguilar, Shek O, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: Leszek
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Karczmarski
authors.affiliation: South China Sea Bio-Resource Exploitation and Utilization Collaborative Innovation Center; Zhuhai Key Laboratory of Marine Bioresources and Environment, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Coastal Engineering, School of Marine Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, PR China.
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: South China Sea Bio-Resource Exploitation and Utilization Collaborative Innovation Center; Zhuhai Key Laboratory of Marine Bioresources and Environment, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Coastal Engineering, School of Marine Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, PR China.
authors.forename: Xiyang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: South China Sea Bio-Resource Exploitation and Utilization Collaborative Innovation Center; Zhuhai Key Laboratory of Marine Bioresources and Environment, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Coastal Engineering, School of Marine Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, PR China.
authors.forename: Xinjian
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: South China Sea Bio-Resource Exploitation and Utilization Collaborative Innovation Center; Zhuhai Key Laboratory of Marine Bioresources and Environment, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Coastal Engineering, School of Marine Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, PR China.
authors.forename: Yuping
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D000818:Animals; D002681:China; D004289:Dolphins / Q000254:growth & development*; D006802:Human Activities; D006801:Humans; D011156:Population Density; D045483:Rivers; D012623:Seawater