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      Geography of current and future global mammal extinction risk

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          Abstract

          Identifying which species are at greatest risk, what makes them vulnerable, and where they are distributed are central goals for conservation science. While knowledge of which factors influence extinction risk is increasingly available for some taxonomic groups, a deeper understanding of extinction correlates and the geography of risk remains lacking. Here, we develop a predictive random forest model using both geospatial and mammalian species’ trait data to uncover the statistical and geographic distributions of extinction correlates. We also explore how this geography of risk may change under a rapidly warming climate. We found distinctive macroecological relationships between species-level risk and extinction correlates, including the intrinsic biological traits of geographic range size, body size and taxonomy, and extrinsic geographic settings such as seasonality, habitat type, land use and human population density. Each extinction correlate exhibited ranges of values that were especially associated with risk, and the importance of different risk factors was not geographically uniform across the globe. We also found that about 10% of mammals not currently recognized as at-risk have biological traits and occur in environments that predispose them towards extinction. Southeast Asia had the most actually and potentially threatened species, underscoring the urgent need for conservation in this region. Additionally, nearly 40% of currently threatened species were predicted to experience rapid climate change at 0.5 km/year or more. Biological and environmental correlates of mammalian extinction risk exhibit distinct statistical and geographic distributions. These results provide insight into species-level patterns and processes underlying geographic variation in extinction risk. They also offer guidance for future conservation research focused on specific geographic regions, or evaluating the degree to which species-level patterns mirror spatial variation in the pressures faced by populations within the ranges of individual species. The added impacts from climate change may increase the susceptibility of at-risk species to extinction and expand the regions where mammals are most vulnerable globally.

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          Most cited references51

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          Synergies among extinction drivers under global change.

          If habitat destruction or overexploitation of populations is severe, species loss can occur directly and abruptly. Yet the final descent to extinction is often driven by synergistic processes (amplifying feedbacks) that can be disconnected from the original cause of decline. We review recent observational, experimental and meta-analytic work which together show that owing to interacting and self-reinforcing processes, estimates of extinction risk for most species are more severe than previously recognised. As such, conservation actions which only target single-threat drivers risk being inadequate because of the cascading effects caused by unmanaged synergies. Future work should focus on how climate change will interact with and accelerate ongoing threats to biodiversity, such as habitat degradation, overexploitation and invasive species.
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            PanTHERIA: a species-level database of life history, ecology, and geography of extant and recently extinct mammals

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              The status of the world's land and marine mammals: diversity, threat, and knowledge.

              Knowledge of mammalian diversity is still surprisingly disparate, both regionally and taxonomically. Here, we present a comprehensive assessment of the conservation status and distribution of the world's mammals. Data, compiled by 1700+ experts, cover all 5487 species, including marine mammals. Global macroecological patterns are very different for land and marine species but suggest common mechanisms driving diversity and endemism across systems. Compared with land species, threat levels are higher among marine mammals, driven by different processes (accidental mortality and pollution, rather than habitat loss), and are spatially distinct (peaking in northern oceans, rather than in Southeast Asia). Marine mammals are also disproportionately poorly known. These data are made freely available to support further scientific developments and conservation action.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Formal analysisRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Formal analysisRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: MethodologyRole: ResourcesRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Funding acquisitionRole: MethodologyRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Data curationRole: ResourcesRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: MethodologyRole: ResourcesRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Data curationRole: ResourcesRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: ResourcesRole: SupervisionRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                16 November 2017
                2017
                : 12
                : 11
                : e0186934
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States of America
                [2 ] NatureServe, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America
                [3 ] Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Science, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, United States of America
                [4 ] Department of Biology, Auburn University at Montgomery, Montgomery, Alabama, United States of America
                [5 ] International Union for Conservation of Nature, Gland, Switzerland
                [6 ] World Agroforestry Center, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines
                [7 ] Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
                [8 ] Instituto de Ecologia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, México D.F., México
                [9 ] Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
                [10 ] Global Mammal Assessment program, Department of Biology and Biotechnologies, Sapienza University of Rome, Roma, Italy
                [11 ] Unit of Biodiversity and Conservation, Swiss Federal Research Institute, Birmensdorf, Switzerland Unit of Biodiversity and Conservation, Swiss Federal Research Institute (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland
                University of Massachusetts Amherst, UNITED STATES
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                [¤]

                Current address: Colorado Natural Heritage Program and Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Warner College of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States of America

                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4701-5923
                Article
                PONE-D-16-51574
                10.1371/journal.pone.0186934
                5690607
                29145486
                22d6c206-19e0-45f3-a4e4-1f4e4f0100bf
                © 2017 Davidson et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 30 December 2016
                : 10 October 2017
                Page count
                Figures: 3, Tables: 0, Pages: 18
                Funding
                Our research was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Dimensions of Biodiversity program (grant DEB-1136586). ADD, BW, and CHG were supported by NSF grant DEB-1136586, and KTS was supported by NSF grant DEB-1146198. GCC was supported by CNPq grants 302776/2012-5 and 563352/2010-8. GCC, CHG., and ADD were also supported by CAPES/Science without Borders grant PVE 018/2012, and VCR by the NASA Biodiversity Program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Earth Sciences
                Atmospheric Science
                Climatology
                Climate Change
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Ecology
                Ecological Metrics
                Extinction Risk
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Ecology
                Ecological Metrics
                Extinction Risk
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Conservation Biology
                Species Extinction
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Conservation Science
                Conservation Biology
                Species Extinction
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Evolutionary Biology
                Evolutionary Processes
                Species Extinction
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Eukaryota
                Animals
                Vertebrates
                Amniotes
                Mammals
                Ecology and Environmental Sciences
                Environmental Geography
                People and Places
                Geographical Locations
                Asia
                Earth Sciences
                Geography
                Human Geography
                Social Sciences
                Human Geography
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Population Biology
                Population Metrics
                Population Density
                Custom metadata
                The data underlying this study are available from the following previously published works: Jones KE, et al. PanTHERIA: a species-level database of life history, ecology, and geography of extant and recently extinct mammals. Ecology. 2009;90:2648–2648. Davidson AD, Hamilton MJ, Boyer AG, Brown JH, Ceballos G. Multiple ecological pathways to extinction in mammals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A [Internet]. 2009 Jun 30;106(26):10702–5.

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                Uncategorized

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