What constitutes a 'native' species? Insights from the Quaternary faunal record

The ability to make decisions regarding a species' native status according to appropriate environmental baselines is of vital importance for current-day environmental management, particularly as non-native, invasive species eradication has emerged as a key focus of conservation and ecology. Most definitions of native preclude any human influence, yet the longer-term faunal record reveals a more complex picture of changing species distributions in response to both environmental change and human activity, which have altered regional biogeographic patterns for tens of millennia across the Late Quaternary. We therefore propose a new framework that outlines possible sub-categories that exist between the current 'native'/'non-native' dichotomy, incorporating information and examples from a range of Quaternary sources (palaeontology, zooarchaeology, historical archives, and ancient DNA). This framework is intended to encourage more nuanced debate and perspectives around human-faunal interactions past and present, and to inform management decisions within ecology and conservation.