Environmental change is increasing worldwide and many animal species face anthropogenic threats, especially diet specialists. Yet the degree to which specialist species are currently impacted by environmental change remains poorly understood. We examine how anthropogenic pressures impact dietary specialist species. We calculated indices of diet specialization for mammal species, based on the Gini inequality coefficient, and combined these indices with human pressure data. We then used spatially explicit Mantel tests to examine global patterns in mammal diet specialization. We used a generalized linear mixed model to investigate correlations between the percentage of diet specialist species in mammal communities in an area and its total species richness, human pressure and protection status (mediated through an interaction with the continent). Findings revealed that areas with many diet specialists in mammal communities are also impacted by high human pressure. Additionally, we found that the global protected area system adequately covers habitat for many mammal diet specialists, but has lower effectiveness in South America, Oceania, North America and Europe compared with Africa and Asia. Finally, we identified potential reservoirs for specialist species-places containing many highly diet specialist species and that are subject to less human pressure-which may be important for conservation efforts.

Department of Biology Carleton University Ottawa ON K1S 5B6 Canada

Department of Life and Environmental Sciences Bournemouth University Fern Barrow Poole BH12 5BB UK

Faculty of Environmental Sciences Czech University of Life Sciences Prague Kamýcká 129 Prague 6 CZ 165 00 Czechia

Institute of Biological Sciences University of Zielona Gora Prof Szafrana St Zielona Gora PL 65 516 Poland

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Human pressures threaten diet-specialized mammal communities