Curtis Deutsch, Joshua J. Tewksbury, Raymond B. Huey, Kimberly S. Sheldon et al.
The impact of anthropogenic climate change on terrestrial organisms is often predicted to increase with latitude, in parallel with the rate of warming. Yet the biological impact of rising temperatures also depends on the physiological sensitivity of organisms to temperature change. We integrate empi...
Daniel Simberloff, Jean‐Louis Martin, Piero Genovesi, Virginie Maris et al.
Study of the impacts of biological invasions, a pervasive component of global change, has generated remarkable understanding of the mechanisms and consequences of the spread of introduced populations. The growing field of invasion science, poised at a crossroads where ecology, social sciences, resou...
Michael Hoffmann, Craig Hilton‐Taylor, Ariadne Angulo, Monika Böhm et al.
Assessing Biodiversity Declines Understanding human impact on biodiversity depends on sound quantitative projection. Pereira et al. (p. 1496 , published online 26 October) review quantitative scenarios that have been developed for four main areas of concern: species extinctions, species abundances a...
Georgina M. Mace, Nigel Collar, Kevin J. Gaston, Craig Hilton‐Taylor et al.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species was increasingly used during the 1980s to assess the conservation status of species for policy and planning purposes. This use stimulated the development of a new set of quantitative criteria for listing species...
Stephanie Kramer‐Schadt, Jürgen Niedballa, John D. Pilgrim, Boris Schröder et al.
Abstract Aim Advancement in ecological methods predicting species distributions is a crucial precondition for deriving sound management actions. Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) models are a popular tool to predict species distributions, as they are considered able to cope well with sparse, irregularly samp...
Monika Böhm, Ben Collen, Jonathan Baillie, Philip Bowles et al.
Effective and targeted conservation action requires detailed information about species, their distribution, systematics and ecology as well as the distribution of threat processes which affect them. Knowledge of reptilian diversity remains surprisingly disparate, and innovative means of gaining rapi...
Jennifer Luedtke, Janice Chanson, Kelsey Neam, Louise Hobin et al.
Abstract Systematic assessments of species extinction risk at regular intervals are necessary for informing conservation action 1,2 . Ongoing developments in taxonomy, threatening processes and research further underscore the need for reassessment 3,4 . Here we report the findings of the second Glob...
Bryan P. Wallace, Andrew DiMatteo, Brendan Hurley, Elena M. Finkbeiner et al.
BACKGROUND: Resolving threats to widely distributed marine megafauna requires definition of the geographic distributions of both the threats as well as the population unit(s) of interest. In turn, because individual threats can operate on varying spatial scales, their impacts can affect different se...
Mélodie A. McGeoch, Stuart H. M. Butchart, Dian Spear, Elrike Marais et al.
Abstract Aim Invasive alien species (IAS) pose a significant threat to biodiversity. The Convention on Biological Diversity’s 2010 Biodiversity Target, and the associated indicator for IAS, has stimulated globally coordinated efforts to quantify patterns in the extent of biological invasion, its imp...
Jeffrey A. Harvey, Kévin Tougeron, Rieta Gols, Robin Heinen et al.
Abstract Climate warming is considered to be among the most serious of anthropogenic stresses to the environment, because it not only has direct effects on biodiversity, but it also exacerbates the harmful effects of other human‐mediated threats. The associated consequences are potentially severe, p...
Emily Beech, Malin Rivers, Sara Oldfield, Paul Smith
This article presents, for the first time, an overview of all known tree species by scientific name and country level distribution, and describes an online database—GlobalTreeSearch—that provides access to this information. Based on our comprehensive analysis of published data sources and expert inp...
Stuart H. M. Butchart, H. Reşi̇t Akçakaya, Janice Chanson, Jonathan Baillie et al.
The Red List Index uses information from the IUCN Red List to track trends in the projected overall extinction risk of sets of species. It has been widely recognised as an important component of the suite of indicators needed to measure progress towards the international target of significantly redu...
Cindy Q. Tang, Tetsuya Matsui, Haruka Ohashi, Yi-Fei Dong et al.
Today East Asia harbors many "relict" plant species whose ranges were much larger during the Paleogene-Neogene and earlier. The ecological and climatic conditions suitable for these relict species have not been identified. Here, we map the abundance and distribution patterns of relict species, showi...
Stefano Mammola, Pedro Cardoso, David C. Culver, Louis Deharveng et al.
Abstract In light of recent alarming trends in human population growth, climate change, and other environmental modifications, a “Warning to humanity” manifesto was published in BioScience in 2017. This call reiterated most of the ideas originally expressed by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 19...
Helge Bruelheide, Jürgen Dengler, Borja Jiménez‐Alfaro, Oliver Purschke et al.
Abstract Aims Vegetation‐plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co‐occurring in the same community. Vegetation‐plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continen...